In 1994 two economists compared fast-food restaurants on either side of a state line and found that a minimum wage rise did not cut employment. The profession has been arguing ever since, and the argument itself is the exhibit.
ON THE FLOOR
Charles Horton Cooley
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“You learned who you are by watching what other people reflected back at you. The mirror, it turns out, was people all along.”
ON THE FLOOR
Edward Soja
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“Space is not the stage the story happens on - it is one of the actors. Ask WHERE, and half the mystery answers itself.”
ON THE FLOOR
George Herbert Mead
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“The self is a conversation: the I speaking, the Me listening with everyone else's ears. You rehearse society every time you think.”
LAB3-061 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Open the drawer
A marked geographic comparison showing fast-food restaurant locations straddling the 1992 New Jersey minimum wage increase, the visual foundation of the natural experiment that launched three decades of minimum-wage econometrics debate.
LAB3-062 · The Minimum Wage Fight — What is this thing?
A hand-drawn or early-digital map showing New Jersey and Pennsylvania counties bisected by the state line, with fast-food restaurant locations marked to isolate the wage-policy boundary effect in a natural experiment.
LAB3-063 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Read the source
The telephone questionnaire used by Card and Krueger to survey fast-food managers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in 1994, asking about employment levels before and after New Jersey's minimum wage increase.
LAB3-064 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Map it / time it
A working researcher's card catalog—representative of the type used to organize empirical studies by geography, method, and finding—showing how economists tracked competing claims about employment effects from 1994 onward.
LAB3-065 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Two sources disagree
Telephone survey pages from the landmark 1994 study comparing fast-food employment in New Jersey and Pennsylvania after New Jersey's minimum wage increase, the primary data source that sparked two decades of methodological debate.
LAB3-066 · The Minimum Wage Fight — State the claim
Telephone survey questionnaire used to interview fast-food managers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in 1993–94, documenting employment before and after New Jersey's minimum wage increase. Primary source for the landmark study claiming no employment loss.
LAB3-067 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Take the other side
Telephone survey of 410 fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, conducted before and after New Jersey's April 1992 minimum wage increase from $4.25 to $5.05 per hour, forming the empirical core of the Card-Krueger study.
LAB3-068 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Weigh it
Telephone survey records and payroll data from fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, collected before and after New Jersey's April 1992 minimum wage increase from $4.25 to $5.05 per hour—the primary evidence in Card and Krueger's landmark 1994 study challenging conventional employment effects.
LAB3-069 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Build the answer
A pedagogical card system organizing published minimum wage employment findings by methodology type, allowing students to visually compare border discontinuity studies against national panel datasets and identify why results diverge systematically.
LAB3-070 · The Minimum Wage Fight — For the file
Telephone interview records and payroll documentation from fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania counties bordering the Delaware River, collected before and after New Jersey's April 1992 minimum wage increase from $4.25 to $5.05 per hour.
LAB3-071 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Go and look
A wall-mounted reference map showing fast-food employment density on either side of the New Jersey–Pennsylvania state line, circa 1992–1994, marking the geographic basis of the Card-Krueger natural experiment.
LAB3-072 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Now, today
Primary data collection instrument from the landmark Card-Krueger study comparing employment at fast-food chains across the New Jersey–Pennsylvania border before and after New Jersey's April 1992 minimum wage increase from $4.25 to $5.05 per hour.
LAB3-073 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Teach it back
A telephone-survey instrument and resulting dataset from the 1992–1993 border study comparing fast-food employment in New Jersey (which raised its minimum wage) against eastern Pennsylvania (which did not), foundational to the modern minimum-wage employment debate.
LAB3-074 · The Minimum Wage Fight — The other place
Telephone and payroll records from 410 fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, collected in 1992–1993 to test whether New Jersey's minimum wage increase reduced employment at the border.
LAB3-075 · The Minimum Wage Fight — One object, close
A representative payroll record from a quick-service restaurant chain operating across a state minimum-wage border, showing hourly employee hours, shifts, and job counts before and after a wage increase, the primary data type underlying the Card-Krueger study.
From the gallery’s own wall — “LAB3-061 · The Minimum Wage Fight — Open the drawer”.