• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.31-56
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• 2016

This study analyzes the effect of a minimum wage on the wage compression within Korean establishments. The results are as follows. Firstly, increases of a ratio of workers who get minimum wage within establishments have a effect to compress the wage distribution within establishments. Secondly, the establishment average wages get lower as their minimum wage ratios get larger. In this situation, high wage group's wages fall deeply than low wage group's these. Thirdly, the relative wages of high wage group to low wage group tend to be small as their minimum wage ratios get larger. To conclude, a increase of minimum wage has a effect to raise low wage workers' wages directly, and to reduce high wage workers' wages or increase rates indirectly. And the wage distributions are compressed as a result. So government's policy to increase minimum wage will have a result in reducing wage inequality.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.29-50
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• 2012

This paper estimates the effect of minimum wages on new hiring of low wage workers from a time-series. The results indicate that minimum wages tend to reduce the new hiring of low wage workers, in particular, among women, less educated and older population. The strongly negative effect on new hiring suggests that the burden of reduced labor demand arising from higher minimum wages tend to fall mostly upon the unprotected low-wage job searchers due to the short-term rigidity of employment adjustment among the existing workers.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.107-131
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• 2018

This paper presents a model for the Minimum Wage Commission's decision process and analyzes the strategic actions of the participants in the process. The Minimum Wage Commission has used two ways of setting the minimum wage. The commission has voted either on the labor's against the management' final proposals or has voted on the public interest commissioners' proposal. According to the model, the minimum wage is determined at a level that is very close to or at a level preferred by the median voter among the public interest commissioners. But the probability of adopting labor or management proposal is ex-ante the same. Empirical evidence from the minimum wage decision process is consistent with the predictions of the model. The probability of adopting the labor's proposal in the minimum wage commission voting is not statistically significantly different from 50%. The model also suggests that the preference of the median voter among public interest commissioners determines the minimum wage level. Since the government appoints public interest commissioners and thus, in fact, the median voters, the government can decide the minimum wage level. This proposition is also consistent with data. The annual growth rate of the minimum wage under the progressive governments is higher than under conservative governments.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.73-101
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• 2021

Employing bunching estimators of Cengiz et al. (2019) for data from the "Economically Active Population Survey," this paper estimates the effect of minimum wage increases on the volume of waged employment for the period 2009-2019. A bunching estimator, which exploits yearly changes in the hourly wage distribution due to the minimum wage hike, can be easily applied to the Korean labor market, which adopts the yearly single national minimum wage. The estimation results suggest that an increase in the annual minimum wage during the period from 2009 to 2019 had a negative effect on the volume of waged employment. A 10% increase in the (real) minimum wage leads to a 1.42~1.74% decrease in the volume of waged employment. Disemployment effects of minimum wage hikes are greater in the sector with a higher proportion of minimum wage workers. It is necessary to carefully consider disemployment effects in determining the level of the minimum wage.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.73-105
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• 2019

In this paper, we investigated the impacts of minimum wage on the working hours and labor income of wage earners considering coverage of minimum wage. The results show that the increase in the proportion of workers influenced by the minimum wage in the industry has a negative effect on the average monthly working hours and the average monthly salary of workers affected by the minimum wage. This implies that firms try to offset the rise in labor costs caused by increase in the minimum wage by adjusting the working hours of the employees influenced by the minimum wage. Our finding suggests that the minimum wage policy would reduce the labor income of workers affected by the minimum wage.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.1-42
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• 2019

In this study we find that relatively high minimum wages should make the employment ratios of youth, old, and woman lower very significantly in those regions concerned, futhermore, make the overall employment ratios of those regions lower also by using a proxy variable, the Regional Minimum Wages-Half Median Wages Ratio which represents well the very stable differential structure of wage distributions among regions in Korea. In large Cities those effects become much stronger. But we find also that those effects on the rates of regional unemployment are somewhat double-faced except the case of youth because of the probable generating of many discouraged unemployed among the old and women. So, we can conclude that because of the differential regional economic situations it is not sustainable to increase the overall minimum wages uniformly and excessively and strongly necessary to explore ways toward introducing the proper system of regional minimum wages.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.1-30
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• 2021

The objective of our study is investigating the effects of the minimum wage on a producer price index (PPI) and selected restaurant menu prices. As an identification strategy, we exploit inter-industrial and inter-regional variations in the share of workers who are affected by the minimum wage. Estimation results show a significant relationship between the share of workers affected by the minimum wage and prices. Specifically, a PPI and selected restaurant menu prices tend to rise by 0.77~1.68% and 0.16~1.86%, respectively as the share of workers affected by the minimum wage increase by 1%p. These estimates imply that during the period of our analysis 0.82~3.01% and 4.45~47.04% of overall changes in a PPI and selected restaurant food prices are associated with the adjustment in the minimum wage.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.105-131
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• 2017

This study analyses the effect of a minimum wage on employment by using the government's progressiveness as an instrumental variable. The Ordinary Least Squares regression (OLS) can result in upward biased employment effect due to the endogeneity among variables. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse the casuality that removed endogeneity between variables by using proper instrumental variables. The analysis using instrumental variable shows that the growth of the increasing rate of the minimum wage reduces employment. The negative effect of employment depending on the increase of minimum wage corresponds with the predictions of Neoclassical Economics.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.145-153
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• 2018

Recently the Korean society has suffered severe conflicts over the rate of increase in the minimum wage, while academics have failed to provide appropriate standards through reliable research. Recent foreign studies using natural experimentation or meta-regression analysis show that the increase in minimum wage has little effect on employment. Domestic studies are not yet numerous in number, and they present different conclusions on employment effects depending on the data used, sample period, and research model. To properly assess the employment effects of the minimum wage, future studies should minimize measurement errors in minimum wage dataset, and appropriately consider the endogenous change of minimum wage, economic situation and trends of employment changes. It is also necessary to utilize natural experiment methods before and after the increase of the minimum wage.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.31-72
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• 2021

This study uses the 12-21st waves of KLIPS to estimate the effect of the increase in the minimum wage on the individual's labor market transition through a multinomial logit. In particular, we examine whether there was an additional effect of the rapid increase in the minimum wage in 2018. The main results of this study are as follows. First, the increase in the minimum wage in Korea is found to have increased the probability of becoming unemployed for both wage workers and self-employed, but there is no additional impact found from the 2018 minimum wage increase. Second, the increase in the minimum wage is found to increase the likelihood of the self-employed entering into wage workers, especially temporary and daily workers. Third, we have found that the increase in the minimum wage in 2018 adversely affected self-employed people with high school education, and significantly lowered young wage workers entering into self-employed. Our results suggest that the recent increase in the minimum wage may be responsible for declining self-employment rate in Korea, and may have a negative effect on the quality of employment because the increase in minimum wage can lead to an increase in temporary and daily wage workers.