Doctoral Dissertation Research In Economics: The Gift Of The Living Wage: A Study Of Unequal Wage Schedules In An Experimental Labor Market

与传统的最低工资法不同，生活工资条例是城市用来提高城市中一部分雇主的最低工资的政策。作为抵消城市工资不平等的工具，生活工资法通过创造最低工资差异来重塑当地劳动力市场，其中最低工资因公司而异。通过生活工资法要求更高工资的一个拟议好处是提高工人的绩效。本研究旨在探讨在有最低生活工资条例的市场中，工人和企业的行为反应。礼物交换劳动力市场与各种工资限制，以测试对工人的努力，政策溢出和劳动力供给的影响。这个实验旨在直接检验生活工资会使员工付出更高努力的说法。由于努力是实验室实验中完全可观察到的值，因此有无生活工资法的市场差异将揭示工人行为的任何潜在差异。社会偏好和互惠模型对工人行为提供了相互矛盾的预测。由于受影响的公司不愿增加工资，工人可能不会相应地回报。这项研究的结果将促进对生活工资法和行为互惠模型的理解。

Living wage ordinances, unlike traditional minimum wage laws, are policies used by cities to increase the minimum wage for a subset of employers in the city. Sold as a tool to offset urban wage inequality, living wage laws reshape local labor markets by creating a minimum wage differential in which the minimum varies by firm. One proposed advantage of requiring a higher wage through living wage laws is increased worker performance. This proposed research investigates the behavioral response of workers and firms in markets with living wage ordinances. Gift exchange labor markets are used with various wage restrictions to test the effect on worker effort, policy spillover, and labor supply. This experiment seeks to directly test the claim that living wages produce higher effort from employees. Because effort is a perfectly observable value in laboratory experiments, differences between markets with and without a living wage law will reveal any potential variance in worker behavior. Social preferences and reciprocity models provide conflicting predictions for worker behavior. Because wage increases are involuntary for affected firms, workers may not reciprocate accordingly. The findings of this study will progress understanding of both living wage laws as well as behavioral reciprocity models.