Code For: Price Floors and Employer Preferences: Evidence from a Minimum Wage Experiment

This paper examines the effects of imposing minimum wages in an online labor market through both an experimental intervention and an observational analysis of a platform-wide minimum wage implementation. The study explores how firms adjust to minimum wages, focusing on hiring decisions, wages paid, hours worked, and the composition of hired workers. Key questions addressed include: 1) How do minimum wages affect the probability of hiring and the wages of hired workers? 2) What is the impact on hours worked? 3) Do firms engage in labor-labor substitution by hiring more productive workers when faced with a minimum wage? The research utilizes data from a large online labor platform, including a randomized experiment assigning different minimum wage levels to job postings, as well as an analysis of market-wide outcomes before and after the platform implemented a universal minimum wage. The study provides insights into firm responses to minimum wages in a flexible, project-based labor market, with implications for understanding minimum wage effects in other contexts.