Living Wages

Una de tantas cosas que supuestamente se aprenden en introducción a la economía es que los controles de precios (o salarios) generan distorsiones en la economía.  En el caso del mercado laboral, estas distorsiones pueden significar desempleo y/o discriminación.  "¡Mentiras tecnocráticas!", dicen los estudiantes de 1er año...  Aquí les va cierta evidencia (aunque también hay papers que encuentran lo contrario, conste).

"The Effects of Living Wage Laws: Evidence from Failed and Derailed Living Wage Campaigns"
BY: SCOTT J. ADAMS
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
DAVID NEUMARK
Public Policy Institute of California, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=579906
Paper ID: IZA Discussion Paper No. 1566; Public Policy Institute
of California Working Paper No. 2004-11

ABSTRACT:
Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States but have also been unsuccessful in numerous cities. These unsuccessful campaigns provide a better control group or counterfactual for estimating the effects of living wage laws than the broader set of all cities without a law, and also permit the separate estimation of the effects of living wage laws and living wage campaigns.

We find that living wage laws raise wages of low-wage workers but reduce employment among the least-skilled, especially when the laws cover business assistance recipients or are accompanied by similar laws in nearby cities.