The minimum wage: the case of the United Kingdom and Italy.

The minimum wage has always been an essential topic within the economics field. Its characteristics and effects have been studying by many people over these years, thus enhancing the interest of plenty of economists and not just them. For this reason, the thesis tries to provide a deep analysis on the description of the main concepts of the minimum wage, passing through some issues such as its central peculiarities, how its situation among the different nations around the world is, and what are its general effects on employment, businesses, poverty, and wage inequality, which is the first research question of the thesis. What stood out is that the minimum wage has overall negative effect on employment, businesses, and poverty (despite few positive effects can be found) whereas it has quite positive effect on wage inequality. The thesis wants also to examine the situation of the United Kingdom explaining its backgroud before the introduction of the national minimum wage and what were the steps that made possible its introduction. The second research question of the thesis is to understand the effects that the national minimum wage brought under the same economic aspects; it emerged that it had no adverse employment effect, whereas it had small negative effect on businesses. On the other hand, it had quite positive effect on both pay and wage inequality. Finally, the thesis considers the case of Italy, retracing the debates and discussion over an hypothetical introduction of a minimum wage and how wages around the nation are. The third research question concerns the probable effects of an hypothetical minimum wage introduction in Italy. It stood out that the probable employment effect would depend on the productivity and wage of a firm, alternating positive effects to negative ones. Its effects on wages would be mostly negative as well as in small-sized firms. On the other hand, there would be positive effects on wage inequality.