Higher Wages Can Boost Productivity, but Wages Are Already Growing

Ryan Avent had a nice piece in the NYT this morning pushing the argument that Jared Bernstein, Josh Bivens, and I (among others) have been making for years, that higher wages can be a force driving more rapid productivity growth. The basic point is straightforward, when labor is expensive, employers have more incentive to find ways to use less of it. In this story, anything we can do to push up wages, like promoting unionization or raising minimum wages, is likely to lead to higher productivi...