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for responses to questions and data requests. We thank friends at the House of Prayer for All Nations Church for sharing anecdotes about food stamps (Proverbs 31:8-9). Views in this paper do not represent those of the acknowledged institutions. Researcher(s) own analyses calculated (or derived) based in part on data from The Nielsen Company (US), LLC and marketing databases provided through the Nielsen Datasets at the Kilts Center for Marketing Data Center at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The conclusions drawn from the Nielsen data are those of the researcher(s) and do not reflect the views of Nielsen. Nielsen is not responsible for, had no role in, and was not involved in analyzing and preparing the results reported herein. Errors are ours alone.

This paper considers the impact of the minimum wage on both labor and product markets using detailed store-level scanner data. I provide empirical evidence that a 10% increase in the minimum wage raises grocery store prices by 0.6%-0.8%, and suggest that the minimum wage not only raises labor costs but also affects product demand, especially in poorer regions. This points to novel channels of heterogeneity in pass-through that have distributional consequences, with key implications for real wage inequality. I also find that price rigidity within retail chains ameliorates these effects, reducing the pass-through elasticity for retail prices by about 60%.

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