Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: David Weil

Regulating Wages in a Concentrated Labor Market: Insights from Voluntary Minimum Wages

David Weil, Visiting Professor of Public Policy and Stone Visiting Scholar, HKS

Abstract: The stagnation of wages for workers in the bottom half of the US income distribution contributes to the growth of income inequality over the past forty years. That stagnation coupled with the US Congress’ inability to raise the federal minimum wage since 2009 has led state and local governments to raise their minimum wage levels.  At the same time, many companies have adopted voluntary minimum wages for their own workforces. This includes many of the largest retailers in the US.  Given the scale of these employers, what insights arise from the adoption of voluntary minimum wages on efforts to raise wages generally? Are these company-level efforts window dressing or do they have real impacts on wage structures in the businesses adopting them? How do they compare to government interventions?  More fundamentally, can private actions by big employers in concentrated labor markets serve broader public purposes?  We examine these policy questions by analyzing the impact of voluntary minimum wages adopted between 2014-2023 on wage setting in local labor markets and compare them with other interventions that seek to raise wages.  

David Weil is Professor of Social Policy and Economics at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and this year the Stone Visiting Scholar as well as Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School Wiener Center for Social Policy. He also co-directs and co-founded the Transparency Policy Project at the HKS Ash Center for Democratic Governance where he is a Fellow.

Weil previously served as Dean of the Brandeis Heller School from 2017-2022 and before that was the Peter and Deborah Wexler Chair of Management at Boston University Questrom School of Business from 1991 to 2014. He was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the US Senate to be the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor where he served from 2014 to January 2017.

Weil is an internationally recognized scholar of employment and labor market policy along with regulation, transparency policy, and the impacts of industry restructuring on wages, employment and work outcomes. He has advised government agencies at the state and federal levels and international organizations on employment, labor, and workplace policies.  He is the author of more than 130 articles and five books including the widely cited The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can be Done to Improve It (Harvard University Press). 

His research has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ford Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, Work Rise / Urban Institute, Equitable Growth, Marguerite Casey Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, and National Science Foundation as well as by the U.S. Department of Labor. He received his Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

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