An Experiment in Scotch

Back in Octo­ber of 2006, the Eco­nomic Pol­icy Insti­tute released a paper that made lots of headlines.  The title of the paper was “Hun­dreds of Econ­o­mists Say: Raise the Min­i­mum Wage”.  In it, 659 econ­o­mists signed on for sup­port of rais­ing the min­i­mum wage to $7.25 which is apro­pos of the cur­rent debate in Con­gress over just this issue.

The Econ Jour­nal Review has just released a fas­ci­nat­ing (if you’re an eco­nom­ics geek) paper which sent a ques­tion­aire to the 659 sig­na­to­ries of the first paper ask­ing them about their sup­port of rais­ing the min­i­mum wage.  95 of the sig­na­to­ries com­pleted the ques­tion­aire and the results are very interesting.  The sur­vey was bro­ken into to broad mech­a­nisms, labor-market and socio-political.  Almost all of the sup­port for rais­ing the min­i­mum wage fell into the socio-political bucket, i.e. a moral, philo­soph­i­cal rea­son­ing vs. an eco­nom­ics reasoning.

The sur­vey was meant to increase dis­cus­sion between econ­o­mists on this issue and the responses to the sur­vey are fascinating.  Regard­less of where you fall on the “Raise the min­i­mum wage” issue, I highly rec­om­mend read­ing it.  Once done, you can get some great com­men­tary in the com­ment thread for the arti­cle over at Mar­ginal Rev­o­lu­tion.