Minimum Wage Studies - NYTimes.com Arindrajit Dube's recent article in the "Great Divide" series ("The Minimum We Can Do," Sunday Review, Dec. 1) does not, in our view, provide a balanced assessment of what the evidence says about minimum wages. In particular, Mr. Dube dismisses a large body of research that finds disemployment effects from the minimum wage. He bases his conclusions largely on his own work, without noting that we and other researchers strongly contest his research methodology and conclusions. We find negative employment effects from minimum wages using a variety of methods, including ones that address his contention that different employment trajectories between high- and low-minimum-wage states skew the evidence toward finding disemployment effects. Further, Mr. Dube cites only his own research in asserting that a higher minimum wage in the United States reduces poverty. He makes no mention of contradictory research by Richard V. Burkhauser, Joseph J. Sabia and us, which finds that minimum wage increases have not had a measurable effect on poverty. The debate on these issues is still playing out, and future research will help sort out the answers. Mr. Dube also argues, incorrectly in our view, that the minimum wage should be higher simply because it is lower in real terms than it used to be. The United States has adopted the earned-income tax credit as an alternative policy to increase incomes of low-wage workers, a policy that better targets those benefits to low-income families. Mr. Neumark is a professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine. Mr. Wascher is deputy director, Division of Research and Statistics, at the Federal Reserve Board, but the views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.