This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. Journal of Economic Perspectives
  4. Spring 1999
  5. Retrospectives: American Economists in the Progressive Era on the Minimum Wage

Journal of Economic Perspectives

ISSN 0895-3309 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7965 (Online)

Retrospectives: American Economists in the Progressive Era on the Minimum Wage

  • Robert E. Prasch
Journal of Economic Perspectives
vol. 13, no. 2, Spring 1999
(pp. 221–230)
Download Full Text PDF
(Complimentary)

Abstract

Beginning in 1912, a number of states passed minimum wage legislation that applied exclusively to women and minors. These tentative experiments in economic legislation ended in 1923 when the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's minimum wage law. Remarkably, at this time virtually all professional American economists supported some variety of minimum wage legislation; however, they did not all give the same reasons. This paper briefly examines the context in which this minimum wage legislation was passed and then surveys several of the arguments that American economists gave in support of minimum wage laws.

Citation

Prasch, Robert, E. 1999. "Retrospectives: American Economists in the Progressive Era on the Minimum Wage." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 13 (2): 221–230. DOI: 10.1257/jep.13.2.221

JEL Classification

  • J38 Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs: Public Policy
  • B29 History of Thought since 1925: Other
There are no comments for this article.
Login to Comment