New Research (See All)

• 

  Raising the Tipped Wage Reduces Opportunity for Tipped Workers

  November 2019

  Over five million Americans currently work in restaurants as tipped servers or bartenders in restaurants. By one estimate, nearly one in three American workers worked in the restaurant industry as their first job. Despite the industry’s popularity as a place of employment, it has been the subject in recent years of a well-funded attack by a labor group called the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC). ROC [...]
• 

  Do Minimum Wage Increases Reduce Crime?

  March 2019

  Advocates have recently claimed that minimum wage increases may actually make our neighborhoods safer.  By raising workers’ wages, the argument goes, legitimate labor market work will be more attractive to potential criminals and crime will fall. But what about those who lose their jobs?  My new research, co-authored with Zachary Fone of the University of New Hampshire and Resul Cesur of the University of Connecticut, finds [...]
• 

  Survey of US Economists on a $15 Federal Minimum Wage

  March 2019

  Across the nation, lawmakers continue to grapple with the viability and impact of increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The debate has become heated and some states and cities have already enacted increases they believe will benefit workers. While the true impact of these increases is still being discovered, recent surveys of businesses, franchises and other groups suggest that such minimum wage raises may actually harm workers, [...]