Retrospectives: American Economists in the Progressive Era on the Minimum Wage
回顾1912至1923年间美国各州最低工资立法，当时几乎所有经济学家都支持，但理由各异。本文简述立法背景并梳理经济学家的支持论点。
Beginning in 1912, a number of states passed minimum wage legislation that applied exclusively to women and minors. These tentative experiments in economic legislation ended in 1923 when the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's minimum wage law. Remarkably, at this time virtually all professional American economists supported some variety of minimum wage legislation; however, they did not all give the same reasons. This paper briefly examines the context in which this minimum wage legislation was passed and then surveys several of the arguments that American economists gave in support of minimum wage laws.