Original article Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

THE PUSH FOR A U.S. LIVING WAGE: MODELING FOR INFLATION, UNEMPLOYMENT, BOTH, OR NEITHER

Todd J. Barri - West Connecticut State University
Received: 02 Jun 2022
Revised:
Published:
Downloads: 0
Citations: 0
Issue 2/2020
JEL J31 J32 E24 E31 E32
DOI https://doi.org/10.56497/etj2065203

Abstract

Few U.S. economic issues in the last half-century have engendered as frequent political controversies as the minimum wage. This article looks at both the politics behind efforts to make the minimum wage a “living wage” in recent elections, and the many relevant economic effects, such as inflation and unemployment, from both a macro- and a microeconomic perspective. The paper offers several original conceptual models, in various economic situations, which examine the regressions of eight U.S. states over the 1996-2016 period. The results show that high minimum wages can harm employment, but that moderation can aid stagnant wages in economically-improving inflationary settings without drastically reducing employment short-term.

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