Creating a Pluralist Paradigm: An Application to the Minimum Wage Debate

Abstract

The article offers a pluralist route along which different theoretical approaches can be integrated into a common framework. It proposes to use causal mapping and combine it with a micro-meso-macro architecture to get well-structured descriptions of different economic theories and to provide a good foundation for integrating these theories. In order to illustrate this point and to shed some new light on a contested economic issue, the article applies this strategy to the minimum wage debate. It follows from the analysis that from a theoretical viewpoint, the effect of the minimum wage on employment is indeed ambiguous, which is perfectly in line with the existing empirical evidence.