Minimum Wage and Unemployment in Russia: A New Look on an Old Construct

This file contains data files and do files to replicate the empirical results in the paper.In the paper, we investigate the unemployment effects of the minimum wage policy in Russia. Using region-level data, we show that a 1% increase in the minimum wage raises the unemployment rate among young workers by 0.05 percentage points but does not affect older workers. Additionally, we find that the minimum wage increases the share of the labor force employed informally. We corroborate these ndings by leveraging a sudden 63% increase in the minimum wage in Kamchatka in 2012 as a natural experiment. Importantly, we show that the magnitude of employment responses to minimum wage changes depends on the elasticity of capital-labor substitution, with stronger effects in industries where capital and labor can be substituted more easily. When capital-labor substitution is not feasible, employers respond to minimum wage increases by hiring workers informally. Finally, consistent with increased separations among young workers and informal recruitment, we find limited income effects of the policy.

本文件包含用于复现论文实证结果的数据文件与do文件。本文聚焦俄罗斯最低工资政策对失业率的影响效应。研究借助区域层面数据发现：最低工资每提升1%，青年劳动者的失业率将上升0.05个百分点，但对老年劳动者失业率无显著影响。此外，本文还发现最低工资政策会提升劳动力市场中非正规就业的占比。本文以2012年俄罗斯堪察加地区最低工资突发上调63%这一事件作为自然实验，验证了上述研究结论。尤为关键的是，本文证实，就业对最低工资调整的响应幅度取决于资本-劳动替代弹性（elasticity of capital-labor substitution）：在资本与劳动替代难度更低的行业，该政策的就业影响效应更为显著。当资本与劳动无法实现替代时，雇主会通过雇佣非正规就业劳动者的方式应对最低工资上调。最后，结合青年群体离职率上升与非正规雇佣规模扩大的现象，本文发现该政策对劳动者收入的影响十分有限。