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In the book Myth and Measurement, Card and Krueger (1995) examine the economic impact of the 1989 minimum wage hike on the welfare of 110 firms which employ a disproportionate number of minimum-wage workers. Their results show mixed evidence that excess returns associated with news about the 1989 minimum-wage legislation. This paper re-examines this question by decomposing excess returns. Our simple and intuitive approach attributes excess returns to either differences in market performances (economy-wide factors) or firm-specific traits (individualistic factors). We likewise show that, generally, minimum wage legislation had little or no effect on employer wealth. However, by decomposing total excess returns, we find that the apparent lack of an effect is a consequence of two off-setting forces: (1) a negative effect arising from firm-specific traits (adverse information on minimum-wage worker employers) and (2) a positive effect arising from market performance. In other words, we show that while the aggregate effect of the 1989 minimum wage hike was neutral, there was a significant negative impact on firms that was neutralized by positive market performance.

The paper links finance theory to labor economics and political economy in the context of migration and immigration policy. Most research treating the impact of immigration has focused on the consequences for employees as measured by wages, earnings, and employment. Less is known about the impact on employers. We lack answers to basic questions concerning the quantitative impact of immigrants on employer profit, and which employers are most likely to gain (suffer) increased (reduced) profits as a result of immigration. Using event study analysis, I measure the impact of immigration policy on the profit of employers and shareholders, particularly in those industries with high needs for skilled immigrants. The American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act (ACWIA) of 1998 nearly doubled the available number of H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers in FY 1999. It was the first time that the U.S. government raised the annual cap of H-1B visa since 1990. I focus on this bill and analyze whether and by how much its passage increased shareholders' profit. The empirical results show that employers and shareholders in the top H-1B visa user industries enjoyed significant and positive returns with the passage of the ACWIA of 1998. Shareholders in high-tech industries (the top users of H-1B visa, 80% of total) such as Computers and related equipment, and Computer and data processing services gained, respectively, an average 21.54% (15.88 if weighted) and 22.77% (18.11 if weighted) in cumulative excess returns in the month after the Act was passed, while industries with little need for H-1B visas experienced no significant changes in cumulative excess returns. Robustness testing including international factor comparisons, semiparametric modeling and a sample-split Chow structural break test support the results.

AbstractSince China promulgated new minimum wage regulations in 2004, the frequency and magnitude of changes in minimum wages have been substantial. This paper uses county-level minimum wage data combined with urban household survey micro-dataset from 16 representative provinces as a merged county-level panel to estimate the employment effects of minimum wage changes in China over the 2002–2009 period. In contrast to the mixed results reported by previous studies using provincial-level data, we present evidence that minimum wage changes led to significant adverse effects on employment in the Eastern and Central regions of China, and resulted in disemployment for females, young adults, and low-skilled workers.JEL classifications:J38