Few topics in labor economics have been ns widely studied as the minimum wage. Arecent survey of the literature (Brown et al 1982) has 111 citations on the topic. Most of these studies have attempted to measure the impact of raising the minimum wage on employment, unemployment or labor force participation. Estimates of minimum wage effects have been obtained for the aggregate economy as well as disaggregated by age, race, sex, and industry. Acommon finding is that the adverse impacts of minimum wages on employment are most severe for younger cohorts, and particularly for young blacks. On the other hand, more skilled workers are not hurt and may even gain from minimum wages,^