The mainstay of the argument against imposing a statutory minimum wage in
Britain is that it will price low-paid workers out of the market. A large nail
is hammered into the coffin of that theory by David Card and Alan B. Krueger’s
Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage (Princeton
University Press, £25/$29.95, ISBN 0 691 04390 6). Their
microscopic analysis of the economic after-effects of raising statutory minimum
wage levels in various US states provides convincing proof that unemployment is
not linked to wage levels.
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