After a period of relative consensus ending in the late 1980s, several controversies arose in economic research on the minimum wage in the 1990s U.S. and U.K. A salient feature of these controversies is that they were partly triggered by the use of specific empirical methods designed to make the facts as uncontroversial as possible (and participating to the so-called credibility revolution in economics, see Angrist and Pischke, 2010). Another one is that they had rather different national trajectories. While the "sound and fury" (Leonard, 2000) escalated throughout the decade in the U.S., the tension appeared to be relatively appeased at the end of it in the U.K.

The set of interviews in this collection explore both the connections between these two national trajectories of the controversies, as well as their specificity. They also aim at moving the focus beyond the content of academic publication to understand the mutual influences between the academic, political and media fields. 

Interviews were conducted by Jérôme Gautié (lead interviewer) and Dorian Jullien. 

1. Orley Ashenfelter

2. George Bain

3. Stephen Bazen

4. Charles Brown

5. David Card

6. John Cridland

7. Richard Freeman

8. Daniel Hamermesh

9.  Lawrence Katz

10. Stephen Machin

11. Alan Manning

12. David Metcalf

13. David Neumark

14. Paul Osterman