The Edinburg Review:
Higher minimum wages will give high tech a boost
23 August 2017
But unlike many researchers, who maintain a laser-like focus on the question of whether minimum wage cuts jobs in the short term, Neumark has examined the policy from many angles. A recent paper of his, along with Grace Lordan of the London School of Economics, looks at how automation responds to minimum-wage increases. This is a timely research paper, because many people are worried about automation making human workers obsolete. It’s pretty obvious that higher minimum wages give employers an incentive to replace humans with machines. For example, fast-food servers can be partially replaced with automated kiosks. Japan already has plenty of these, and they work very well — you order your food from a menu, get a ticket and pick it up at a counter.
Related publications
People Versus Machines: The Impact of Minimum Wages on Automatable Jobs
Published August 2017
Available on the NBER website