This dissertation provides two analyses aiming to examine the recent changes in the Thai labor market. The first analysis investigates the distributional change of the real hourly labor income in the Thai labor market from 1985 to 2017. The results show that overall labor income increased over the past three decades. The gender earnings gap was substantially reduced; however, the disparity between regions still exists. The results also indicate an increase in labor income of workers with primary school and higher education during the past three decades. This study found that an increase in labor income of primary school workers is associated with an increase in minimum wage while an increase in labor income of higher education workers is associated with an increase in labor demand. A future study should investigate the causal relationship between changes in labor income and its determinants for different workers to draw a more comprehensive conclusion. The second analysis evaluates the effects of minimum wages on various types of changes in labor market outcomes, including employment, dis-employment, labor force participation, weekly working hours, real hourly wages, real hourly total labor income, and various other types of income. The key contribution of this study is to use the individual-level panel data, i.e., the Matched-Outgoing Rotation Group (Matched-ORG) generated from the Thai Labor Force Survey. The results indicate that minimum wages harm employment, but the effects are relatively small, where the elasticities are in the range of - 0.0029 to -0.0474. However, the results show substantial and significant dis-employment effects for foreign workers, where the coefficients are in the range of 3.454 to 3.636. To reconcile two seemingly contradictory results, the study also estimates the effect of minimum wages on labor force participation and finds that an increase in labor force participation of Thai workers helps mitigate the disemployment for overall workers. The results also suggest that firms adjust working hours and reduce various types of other income to mitigate minimum wage shock. The study concludes that the competitive equilibrium theory can reasonably explain the effects of minimum wages on employment as well as the overall changes in the Thai labor market from 2002 to 2013.

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics International College, the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (2020).