Minimum Wages and Employment: Evidence from Cross-country and Cross-industry Heterogeneity

This paper reassesses the employment effects of minimum wage increases by exploiting cross-country and cross-industry variation in the bindingness of minimum wages. Using country--industry panel data with fixed effects estimation, we find no significant effects on overall wage employment at either the extensive margin (number of employees) or the intensive margin (hours worked per employee). Instead, minimum wage increases are associated with higher self-employment and lower average working hours among the self-employed. Sectoral results show that disemployment effects are concentrated in tradable industries and are more pronounced in high-wage industries where minimum wages are less binding. These findings suggest that employment outcomes reflect the interaction between firms' ability to pass through higher labor costs and workers' incentives to enter the labor market. The results underscore the importance of industry-level heterogeneity and highlight the need to move beyond uniform minimum wage policies in both research and policy design.本研究通过利用各国及各行业间最低工资约束程度的差异，重新评估最低工资上调的就业效应。我们采用国别行业面板数据并结合固定效应估计方法，发现最低工资上调对总体工薪就业在广延边际（extensive margin，即雇员数量）与集约边际（intensive margin，即雇员人均工作时长）上均无显著影响。与之相反，最低工资上调与更高的自营就业比例以及自营就业者的平均工作时长缩短存在显著关联。分行业结果显示，就业减少效应集中于可贸易行业，且在最低工资约束较弱的高工资行业中表现更为显著。上述研究结果表明，就业表现反映了企业转嫁更高劳动成本的能力与劳动者进入劳动力市场的激励之间的相互作用。本研究结果凸显了行业层面异质性的重要性，并强调在学术研究与政策制定中，需摒弃单一化的最低工资政策思路。