We thank Lisa Bell, Carol Tomas and Jay Liao for excellent research assistance and Eric Freeman for helpful suggestions. We are grateful for generous support from the Ford Foundation. 2 ABSTRACTTraditional estimates of minimum wage effects include controls for state unemployment rates and state and year fixed-effects. Using CPS data on teens for the period 1990 -2009, we show that such estimates fail to account for heterogeneous employment patterns that are correlated with selectivity among states with minimum wages. As a result, the estimates are often biased and vary with the source of identifying variation. Including controls for longterm growth differences among states and for heterogeneous economic shocks renders the employment and hours elasticities indistinguishable from zero and rules out any but small disemployment effects. Dynamic evidence further shows the nature of bias in traditional estimates, and it also rules out more negative long run effects. We do not find evidence of heterogeneous employment effects in different parts of the business cycle. We also consider predictable versus unpredictable changes in the minimum wage by looking at indexation of the minimum wage in some states. 3 IntroductionThe employment level of teens has fallen precipitously in the 2000s, coinciding with the growth of state and federal minimum wages. But are the two causally related? Previous research on the effects of minimum wage policies on teen employment has produced conflicting findings. One set of results-statistically significant disemployment effects with employment elasticities in the "old consensus" range of -0.1 to -0.3-are associated with many studies that focus on teens, that use national-level household data (usually the Current Population Survey), and that include state and year fixed-effect controls to identify minimum wage effects. Another set of results-employment effects that are close to zero or even positive-are associated with studies that focus on low-wage sectors such as restaurants, that use employer-based data, and that use only local comparisons to identify minimum wage effects. 1The inconsistent findings may arise from differences in the groups being examined and/or differences in the datasets that are used. However, recent evidence suggests other possibilities (Dube, Lester and Reich, forthcoming). Unobserved spatial heterogeneities in employment trends can generate biases toward negative employment elasticities in national minimum wage studies as well as overstate the precision of local studies.In this paper, we seek to address and resolve the conflicting findings by using CPS data on teens over the 1990 to 2009 period and providing a detailed examination of heterogeneity and selectivity issues. More specifically, we consider whether the source of identifying variation in the minimum wage is coupled with sufficient controls for 1 Card and Krueger (2000); Neumark and Wascher (2007); Dube, Naidu and Reich (2007).4 counterfactual employment growth. With the addition of these controls we are able...

We assess alternative research designs for minimum wage studies. States in the U.S. with larger minimum wage increases di er from others in business cycle severity, increased inequality and polarization, political economy, and regional distribution. The resulting time-varying heterogeneity biases the canonical two-way fixed e ects estimator. We consider alternatives including border discontinuity designs, dynamic panel data models, and the synthetic control estimator. Results from four datasets and six approaches all suggest employment e ects are small. Covariates are more similar in neighboring counties, and the synthetic control estimator assigns greater weights to nearby donors. These findings also support using local area controls.

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Using data from the 1990 U.S. Census (PUMS 5%), the authors present the first large-scale study of wage differentials between heterosexual and homosexual men. The homosexual sample, consisting of gay men in unmarried partnered relationships, are estimated to have earned 15.6% less than similarly qualified married heterosexual men, and 2.4% less than similarly qualified unmarried partnered heterosexual men. The authors interpret these two figures as upper-and lower-bound estimates of the differential between homosexual and heterosexual men. The dual comparison enables the authors to disentangle the penalty to being unmarried from other determinants of the wage differential; estimated at 14.1%, this variable appears to be the main source of the wage gap.Economists have only recently explored the relation between labor market outcomes and sexual orientation. Our purpose here is twofold: first, to offer the first large-scale study analyzing wage disparities between homosexual and heterosexual men, and second, to determine the key characteristics that account for this wage gap. This unique analysis is possible because in 1990, for the first time, the U.S. Census asked whether an individual's relationship to the head of the household was that of an "unmarried partner." Since other possible responses for occupants who were not relatives of the head included boarder, housemate, roommate, and other non-relative, we make the reasonable assumption that men in same-sex unmarried partner relations were homosexual. The resultant sample of 4,427 homosexual men allows for the first large-scale study of homosexual men.

The authors analyze 884 Internet-based restaurant menus from inside and outside San Jose, California, which they collected before and after the city implemented a 25% minimum wage increase in 2013. Their findings suggest that nearly all of the cost increase was passed through to consumers, as prices rose 1.45% on average. Minimum wage price elasticities averaged 0.058 for all restaurants and ranged from 0.044 to 0.109, depending on the type of restaurant. The authors’ estimate of payroll cost increases net of turnover savings is consistent with these findings. Equally important, border effects for restaurants are smaller than is often conjectured. Price differences among restaurants that are one-half mile from either side of the policy border are not competed away, indicating that restaurant demand is spatially inelastic. These results imply that citywide minimum wage policies need not result in substantive negative employment effects nor shifts of economic activity to nearby areas.