Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. The two-week OxTalks freeze period starts on Monday 2nd March. During this time, there will be no facility to publish or edit events. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period. Once Oxford Events launches, you will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
Does decentralizing policymaking authority lead to a closer match between public policies and citizen preferences? We study this question in the context of U.S. minimum wage laws. Using novel survey data and aggregation methods, we generate estimates of minimum wage preferences for all U.S. cities and compare them to actual minimum wages. We find that prevailing minimum wages are generally lower than residents prefer, and this conservative bias is most pronounced in states with pre-emption laws. However, locally controlled minimum wages leapfrog public preferences and are higher than residents want, on average. Finally, we consider how various counterfactual policies might improve representation and conclude that a top-down approach with minimum wages tailored to local conditions would produce the closest match between preferences and policies.
