| This dissertation is organized in three chapters. The first two chapters study the effects of minimum wages on extensive and intensive margins of employment when interacted with structural elements of the labor markets and labor forces. Previous literature on minimum wages mostly concentrates on teenage employment and looks at the employment margin as the main margin of analysis. In this thesis, I show that the impact of minimum wages can only be thoroughly analyzed when accompanying labor market characteristics are modeled. Many important potential effects are overlooked if solely employment margins are studied.;In the first chapter, I develop a structural model of the employment effects of minimum wages in inflexible labor markets with fixed employment costs. When there are fixed costs associated with employment, minimum wage regulation not only results in a reduction in employment among low productivity workers but also shifts the distribution of hours for the available jobs in the market and restricts the number of part-time jobs. Part-time jobs play a crucial role in participation decisions of women, since women may prefer flexibility with regard to hours over pay while looking for a job.;In the second chapter, I look at the correlation between minimum wages and female labor force participation, employment, and incidence of part-time jobs in the presence of market inflexibilities in seventeen OECD countries over twenty years. I show that higher minimum wages imply higher unemployment and lower participation rates. In addition to extensive margin analysis, I show that higher minimum wages also decrease the ratio of part-time workers and the effects on part-time jobs and participation rates are stronger in countries with strict employment protection laws.;In the third chapter, I study the effects of welfare and work choices of single mothers on their children's cognitive development with my coauthor Han Chyi. We develop and estimate a dynamic structural model. We find that single mothers' work and welfare use both have positive effect on children's outcomes, but this effect declines by the initial ability. We also look at the implications of welfare eligibility time limit, and maternal leave policies on children's outcome. |
