Are We Teaching Outside the Box? A National Survey on Teaching the Minimum Wage in Undergraduate Economics Classes. Issue 1 (2nd January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dolar, Veronika
• Is Part Of: Forum for social economics. Volume 49:Issue 1(2020)
• Page Start: 51
• Page End: 74
• Publication Date: 2020-01-02
• Subjects: minimum wage economic education -- undergraduate teaching -- pedagogy; A1 -- A22 -- J0 -- J39; Economics -- Sociological aspects -- Periodicals; Economics -- Periodicals; 330
• DOI: 10.1080/07360932.2015.1103769
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0736-0932

Abstract

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to study how professors in the US teach about the minimum wage. Results of a survey suggest that almost all instructors cover the topic of minimum wage in their introductory courses and tend to cover this topic in a similar manner to how it is covered in introductory textbooks: by focusing on the employment effects of the minimum wage in the neoclassical model. In addition, instructors have relatively conservative views about the minimum wage effect and tend to agree that the minimum wage negatively impacts low-skilled workers. Finally, there seems to be a small "liberal bias" where instructors who are in favor of the minimum wage are less likely to teach the standard labor supply-demand model, and a larger "conservative bias" where instructors who tend to believe in the negative impact of a minimum wage are less likely to discuss the assumption of monopsony in the labor market.