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Minimum Wages, Efficiency and Welfare

Minimum wages, efficiency, and welfare
Authors: Berger, David; Herkenhoff, Kyle; Mongey, Simon;

Minimum Wages, Efficiency and Welfare

Abstract

Many argue that minimum wages can prevent efficiency losses from monopsony power. We assess this argument in a general equilibrium model of oligopsonistic labor markets with heterogeneous workers and firms. We decompose welfare gains into an efficiency component that captures reductions in monopsony power and a redistributive component that captures the way minimum wages shift resources across people. The minimum wage that maximizes the efficiency component of welfare lies below $8.00 and yields gains worth less than 0.2% of lifetime consumption. When we add back in Utilitarian redistributive motives, the optimal minimum wage is $11 and redistribution accounts for 102.5% of the resulting welfare gains, implying offsetting efficiency losses of −2.5%. The reason a minimum wage struggles to deliver efficiency gains is that with realistic firm productivity dispersion, a minimum wage that eliminates monopsony power at one firm causes severe rationing at another. These results hold under an EITC and progressive labor income taxes calibrated to the U.S. economy.

Keywords

labor markets, minimum wages, oligopsony, market structure, Game theory, economics, finance, and other social and behavioral sciences

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Powered by OpenAIRE graph
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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
6
Top 10%
Average
Top 10%
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