It is a familiar notion to economists, though a strangely unfamiliar one to the general public, that minimum wage laws, though they benefit those workers who are successful in obtaining employment in the industries subject to them, tend to create unemployment or else to drive a number of workers into the equivalent of the subsistence sector of the economy. This conclusion is derived from an application of the elementary theory of demand and supply as to the effects of price-support policies. The problem has not to my knowledge been investigated in the context of a general equilibrium analysis. In this context it has some affinities to the problem of the effects of unionization, analysed in a previous paper by the present writer and Peter Mieszkowski,1 but sufficient analytical difference to merit separate investigation. This is the purpose of the present paper. It is shown that, contrary to the conclusions drawn from partial equilibrium analysis, there are possible circumstances in which a minimum wage law that applies to only a part of the productive activities of the economy may benefit workers in all sectors. On the other hand, if the minimum wage law applies to all sectors, or to all sectors but those regarded as constituting a subsistence sector, the traditional conclusion can be rigorously demonstrated. Before commencing the analysis, it is relevant to note that minimum wages are invariably legislated in terms of money, and that while they may have been originally intended to raise real wages above the level prevailing under competition, the intention may have been frustrated, and the minimum wage have become ineffective, through the joint influence of price inflation and increasing productivity resulting from technical progress. This fact is disregarded in the ensuing analysis, in which it is assumed that the minimum wage is effective in raising the real wage of labour. It is further assumed, for purposes of analysis, that the minimum wage law is intended to raise the marginal product of labour in the industries to which the law applies in terms of the produce of those industries. For the purposes of the analysis, the economy is initially divided into two sectors, producing two commodities with the employment of two factors of production. Commodity X is assumed to be relatively capital-intensive by comparison with commodity Y; both are assumed to be produced subject to constant-returns-to-scale production functions. The three figures all depict the standard Edgeworth-Bowley production contract box, the endowment of the economy with capital being represented by the vertical side of the box and the