The Very Idea of Applying Economics: The Modern Minimum-Wage Controversy and Its Antecedents

Abstract

Disagreements among economists rarely breach the academy's walls.The recent minimum-wage controversy is a significant exception.At first glance, all the sound and fury is a puzzle. 1 Minimum-wage effects, at least for current U.S. magnitudes, are small potatoes.2 Of several more important policy concerns-entitlement reform, health insurance, CPI calculation, for example-none has generated anything like the vituperation that has characterized the minimum-wage controversy.But if the minimum-wage controversy is not especially important to the economy, it is very important to economics, and, thereby, to the status of economics as a policy science.

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