Economists call for minimum wage to be raised

5 Nobel winners, others: Phased-in increase to $7.25 would help economy

NEW YORK - More than 650 economists, including five winners of the Nobel Prize for economics, called Wednesday for an increase in the minimum wage, saying the value of the last increase, in 1997, has been “fully eroded.”

Economists including Nobel prize winners Kenneth Arrow of Stanford University, Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University and Clive Granger of the University of California, San Diego said in a statement released Wednesday that the real value of today’s federal minimum wage is less than it has been at any time since 1951.