CEA nominee's minimum wage study refuted

Alan Krueger, the Princeton economist appointed by Barack Obama to head the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, made something of a splash in a 1994 paper he co-authored arguing that an increase in the minimum wage in New Jersey didn’t result in job losses among fast-food workers. This of course goes against the common sense conclusion of most economists.

Democratic advocates of minimum wage increases seized on this slender bit of evidence in support of a policy change that has always polled well with the general public. But as James Pethokoukis points out, Krueger’s paper was pretty well demolished by a paper co-authored by David Neumark and William Wascher.