Disagreements among economists rarely breach the academy's walls. The recent minimum-wage controversy is a significant exception. At first glance, all the sound and fury is a puzzle. 1 Minimum-wage effects, at least for current U.S. magnitudes, are small potatoes. 2 Of several more important policy concerns-entitlement reform, health insurance, CPI calculation, for example-none has generated anything like the vituperation that has characterized the minimum-wage controversy. But if the minimum-wage controversy is not especially important to the economy, it is very important to economics, and, thereby, to the status of economics as a policy science.
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Thomas C. Leonard (2000) studied this question.
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