Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Minimum Wage Increases Resulting in More Restaurant Hygiene Violations in Seattle

Restaurants in Seattle are showing an increase in hygiene violations as the minimum wage climbs.

From the paper Minimum Wage and Restaurant Hygiene Violation: Evidence from Food Establishments in Seattle by Subir K. Chakrabarti, Srikant Devaraj and Pankaj C. Patel  (my highlight):
We assess the effects of rise in minimum wages on hygiene violation scores in food service establishments. Using a difference-in-difference analysis on hygiene rating of food establishments in Seattle [where minimum wage increased annually between 2010 and 2013] as the treated group and from New York City [minimum wage was constant] as the control group, we find an increase in real minimum wage by $0.10 increased total hygiene violation scores by 11.45 percent. Consistent with our theoretical model, an increase in minimum wage in Seattle has no influence in more severe (red) violations, and a significant increase in less severe (blue) violations. Our findings are consistent while using an alternate control group - Bellevue City, King County, located near Seattle.

This Sunday on Sunday Morning with Robert Wenzel I smash slick lefties who advocate minimum wage laws.

 -RW

(via Tyler Cowen)

3 comments:

  1. Clearly Chakrabati, Devaraj, and Patel are secret white supremacist Koch operatives...

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  2. What is the theoretical basis for hygiene violations increasing with minimum wage rises? are there less people to hire for sanitation work?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Correct. Most places just give the hard workers the pay raise and the rest are laid off. So the kitchen has less staff doing more work and some tasks are going to slip because there are not enough hands on deck.

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