Minimum-wage increases promise higher pay, but higher labor costs may also lead businesses to reduce hiring or working hours, favor more experienced workers, or automate more tasks. Because minimum-wage policies do not necessarily reach the families most in need, the Earned Income Tax Credit provides a more targeted way to support low-income working families without limiting employment opportunities.
David Neumark
Articles
Where data centers locate to fuel the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) is of burgeoning political importance with economic and environmental implications. We highlight local factors associated with siting and opposition.
November 3, 2026
Event
The Hoover Institution Economic Policy Working Group hosted “Money and Power: Historical Lessons for Stablecoins and U.S Dollar Dominance” with Michael D. Bordo, the Duncan Stewart Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
April 23, 2026
Articles
Synthetic control methods hold the promise of identifying a credible counterfactual by closely reproducing pretreatment outcome paths. Their reliability, however, depends in part on how effectively they constrain researchers’ less-visible degrees of freedom. We explore these methods’ sensitivity by constructing 1440 plausibly defensible specifications to estimate the employment effect of California’s $20 fast-food minimum wage. While over 96 percent of the estimated employment effects are negative, the range is vast, illustrating that synthetic control methods are sensitive to specification choice.
October 30, 2026