摘要：There is a growing body of research that measures employment effects of the
minimum wage by using longitudinal data on individuals to compare job loss of
workers affected by a minimum wage increase with those who are not directly
affected. This sort of study requires good quality wage data in order to clearly
identify these treatment and control groups. Much of the evidence on the impact
of the UK minimum wage uses this technique with poor quality wage data. This
paper examines the impact of the October 2003 increase in the National Minimum
Wage (NMW) using a much better measure of the wage. We find insignificant
negative effects on the employment retention rates of all adults and, most
notably, male workers. Analysis of the probability of employment retention
across different hourly wage rates also show how sensitive this methodology can
be to different definitions of the treatment and control group.
