最低工资、效率与福利
Minimum Wages, Efficiency, and Welfare
Econometrica · 2025 · [{"name": "David Berger", "affiliation": ["Duke University"]}, {"name": "Kyle Herkenhoff", "affiliation": ["University of Minnesota"]}, {"name": "Simon Mongey", "affiliation": ["Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis"]}]
中文摘要
许多人认为，最低工资可以防止买方垄断力量造成的效率损失。我们在一个具有异质性工人和企业的寡头买方垄断劳动力市场一般均衡模型中评估这一论点。我们将福利收益分解为一个效率成分和一个再分配成分：前者刻画买方垄断力量的降低，后者刻画最低工资如何在人群之间转移资源。使福利效率成分最大化的最低工资低于 8.00 美元，其产生的收益价值不到终身消费的 0.2%。当我们重新加入功利主义再分配动机后，最优最低工资为 11 美元，再分配占由此产生的福利收益的 102.5%，这意味着存在 −2.5% 的抵消性效率损失。最低工资之所以难以带来效率收益，是因为在现实的企业生产率离散程度下，能消除某一家企业买方垄断力量的最低工资，会在另一家企业造成严重的配给。在校准至美国经济的劳动所得税抵免（EITC）与累进劳动所得税制度下，上述结果依然成立。
Abstract
Many argue that minimum wages can prevent efficiency losses from monopsony power. We assess this argument in a general equilibrium model of oligopsonistic labor markets with heterogeneous workers and firms. We decompose welfare gains into an efficiency component that captures reductions in monopsony power and a redistributive component that captures the way minimum wages shift resources across people. The minimum wage that maximizes the efficiency component of welfare lies below $8.00 and yields gains worth less than 0.2% of lifetime consumption. When we add back in Utilitarian redistributive motives, the optimal minimum wage is $11 and redistribution accounts for 102.5% of the resulting welfare gains, implying offsetting efficiency losses of −2.5%. The reason a minimum wage struggles to deliver efficiency gains is that with realistic firm productivity dispersion, a minimum wage that eliminates monopsony power at one firm causes severe rationing at another. These results hold under an EITC and progressive labor income taxes calibrated to the U.S. economy.