We use Canadian data over the period of 1991Q1 to 2019Q2 to examine the effect of higher minimum wages on consumption, measured as the real retail trade sales per adult population. Such an examination is rare in the extant literature and it is timely given the increasing debate concerning the stimulus versus inflationary effects arising from wage polices because of COVID-19 global pandemic. We apply the autoregressive distributed lag model to determine the causal relationship between these variables. We find one long-run cointegrating relationship that runs from the real minimum wage to the real retail trade sales. In addition, we find that a 1% increase in the minimum wage is associated with almost a 0.5% increase in real retail trade sales in the long run. While our findings rest on several statistical assumptions, there is strong evidence in support of the position that minimum wage strengthens aggregate consumer spending, and thereby the standard of living, economic growth and stability. This is a position that differs from the conclusions drawn from mainstream academic and policy debates on the economic usefulness and efficacy of minimum wage increases.

JEL Codes: C30, E21, E24

我们使用1991年第一季度至2019年第二季度的加拿大数据来检验较高的最低工资对消费的影响，以每成年人口的实际零售贸易销售额来衡量。这种检查在现有文献中很少见，并且鉴于有关COVID-19全球大流行的工资政策对刺激与通货膨胀效应的争论日益增加，因此这种检查是及时的。我们应用自回归分布滞后模型来确定这些变量之间的因果关系。我们发现一种长期的协整关系，从实际最低工资到实际零售贸易。此外，从长期来看，最低工资提高1％会导致实际零售贸易增长近0.5％。虽然我们的发现基于几个统计假设，有充分的证据支持这一立场，即最低工资会增强消费者的总支出，从而提高生活水平，经济增长和稳定。这一立场与主流学术和政策辩论得出的关于最低工资增加的经济效用和功效的结论不同。

JEL代码： C30，E21，E24