• 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.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 Labour Economics
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.63-99
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• 2019

This paper estimates the effect of the minimum wage increment on employment and work-hour of new workers in Korea using the data from the Survey on Labor Conditions by Type of Employment (SLCTE) from 2008 to 2017. We construct worker groups by sex, age, and education to mitigate endogeneity problem in estimating the effect of minimum wage increment. The result shows that the minimum wage increment leads to decrease of new employment and increase of the ratio of new workers who work less than 15 hours per week. Especially, women, the elderly, the youth, and under high school education level group are sensitive to the minimum wage increment.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.37-60
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• 2019

An analysis of the correlation in port-related industries between minimum wage and employment effects, showed that it was very insignificant. However, there are some differences between commercial and temporary workers, those that are self-employed, and other workers in the private sector. Thus, while commercial workers are somewhat stable, they have a somewhat negative effect on temporary workers and self-employed people. At the Minimum Wage Council, the minimum wage hike is seen as stable because of the interaction between income and substitution effects in the labor market. According to the analysis, the port-related industries were affected more by the global economic recession and domestic economic volatility than the variables related to the minimum wage hike.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.35-64
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• 2013

This paper explores whether or not a minimum wage increase can do much to alleviate working poor. For this purpose, I analyze transitions from working poor to working non-poor and to unemployment or non-economically active states, using KLIPS (Korea Labor and Income Panel Study). This study uses the multilevel multinomial logit model to control unobserved individual heterogenous characteristics. It finds that a minimum wage increase tends to cause a higher probability of transitions from working poor to working non-poor. It is also discovered that a minimum wage increase is not negatively related with the persistence of the working state. It is concluded that minimum wage increases are likely to be effective in improving the living standards of the 'working poor'.

• 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.38 no.3
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• pp.1-22
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• 2015

We analyze the effect of the minimum wage on employment using time series data forr groups of individuals most affected by the minimum wage: young males (18 to 24 years old), young females (18 to 22 years old), old males (60 years and older) and old females (60 years and older). Our findings are as follows. First, a unit root test says that the variables like minimum wages and employments are non-stationary variables and they have cointegrational relations each other. It says that in this case, VEC is more suitable than OLS or VAR. Second, an increase of the minimum wage is found to have a weak but persistently negative effect on employment.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.99-121
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• 2021

This paper investigates the relationship between the minimum wage and firm's export behavior by using firm-level data of Vietnamese manufacturing enterprises over the period 2010 through 2015. In this regard, I apply the logistic regression model for the probability of exporting and the differences-in-differences analysis to the data, and find that raising minimum wage standards drive no new exporters but a rise in a firm's export sales. Less productive and more labor-intensive firms raise their amount of exports in response to increasing minimum wage levels. Being exposed to increasing minimum wage levels makes a firm under-perform in terms of export sales compared to non-exposed firms.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.1-19
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• 2008

This is an empirical study in Korea on the effects of the minimum wage. Based on the survey data of security workers of 132 apartment in Seoul metro area, the study finds that the introduction of minimum wage in this sector in 2007 raised wage by 10.9%, reduced employment and work hours by 3.5-4.1% and 13.5% respectively. This implies a short run wage elasticity of employment of -0.312 but much higher elasticity of work hours of -1.68.