When asked about the success of the move toward a minimum wage floor, OShea is reticent.

? would say it has been a worthwhile exercise for students and faculty to bring their interests to the attention of the University,?he says.

Fashionable Research

As the concept of a living wage has gained favor in cities throughout the nation, the financial implications of implementing a mandatory wage floor have slowly become a topic of research for some labor economists.

While traditional economic arguments would discourage the adoption of a mandatory wage floor, a small but growing group of economists are becoming cautious proponents of the living wage.

After studying the economic effects of the minimum wage since the early 1990?, David Neumark, a visiting fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, says he began researching the living wage two and a half years ago.

He has written three papers?ll currently awaiting publication?hat argue that the living wage presents a ?rade off?to low-wage workers.

Neumark says he found in his study of all U.S. municipalities that have a mandatory wage floor, that for a hypothetical 50 percent increase in a living wage, wages as a whole go up three and a half percent, on average. This finding applies to low-wage workers as a whole in cities that adopt living wages, many of whom are not actually affected by the law.

However, Neumark said he found that employment levels drop seven percent for every corresponding 50 percent increase in the living wage, perhaps establishing that low wage workers may actually lose jobs if their wages become too expensive for the employer.

However, PSLM activists have argued that Harvard? demand for labor is relatively constant and independent of wage levels, within a certain spectrum.

?arvard employment is particularly inelastic,?says PSLM member and third-year law student Aaron D. Bartley. ?t? far more valuable for the University to have a clean campus than it would be to have a dirtier campus for less.?Additionally, Bartley says that through the student-union collaboration, labor unions have become strong enough that they simply would not allow workers to be fired without a legitimate reason.

?he students would prevent that from happening,?Bartley says. ?here would be demonstrations. Harvard knows that and wouldn? even try it.? Though Neumark? study examines the elasticity of cities?labor demands relative to wages, no studies have been conducted to look at the employment effects of a wage floor on large private employers.