Dissertation
ESSAYS ON MINIMUM WAGE AND AUTOMATION
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
05/2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000007340
Abstract
This dissertation consists of three chapters on minimum wage and automation. In the first chapter, I examine the employment effects of the minimum wage increase in South Korea and investigate whether these effects vary by the routine task intensity of workers’ occupations. Using the synthetic difference-in-differences, I found that workers who were subject to the new minimum wage experienced a greater decline in the probability of being employed as wage workers, working full-time, and in their annual hours worked, compared to those who were earning higher wages. However, I did not find evidence that workers performing routine-intensive tasks who were bound by the higher minimum wage suffered from greater disemployment effects than less routine workers. In the second chapter, we study the employment effects of the changes in the EITC and the minimum wage implemented between 1990 and 2001 using the continuous difference-in-differences. We found that the minimum wage reduces employment, while the positive interaction effect between the two policies alleviates such negative employment effects. In the third chapter, we examine how automation affects the demand for unskilled and skilled labor using a task-based model. We found underlying forces that affect the labor demand in opposing directions.
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Details
- Title
- ESSAYS ON MINIMUM WAGE AND AUTOMATION
- Creators
- Ilhoon Choi
- Contributors
- Jinhui Bai (Chair)Ray Batina (Committee Member)Jia Yan (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- School of Economic Sciences
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 157
- Identifiers
- 99901220327301842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation