The present dissertation is comprised of three chapters, two of which use distinct empirical strategies to examine the determinants of the minimum wage. The first chapter asks whether political pressure by unions can help explain state minimum wage levels. I employ the variation resulting from an increasing number of states choosing to adopt state minimum wages that exceed the federal level since 1985. Once the model controls for aggregate changes in unionization and minimum wages, and isolates the within state variation around these aggregate changes, unions are not shown to have an effect on the level of a state's minimum wage. The second chapter uses votes from a 1996 California ballot initiative proposing an increase in the state minimum wage to explore whether minimum wage workers support the policy. The affected workers are estimated to have a significant positive impact on the vote, indicating that a majority expects to benefit from the wage increase. The third chapter asks whether differences in preferences for competition can help explain the gender gap in pay and distribution of high profile jobs. I use a laboratory experiment to examine whether males and females differ in their competitive choices when they have information about their relative abilities. I compare these choices to those of participants who have not been given relative performance information. I find that in the "No Information" treatment, males choose to compete more often than do females of the same ability. In contrast, when participants are provided with information about relative abilities, there are no gender differences in competitive choices. The difference in choices across the informational treatments is consistent with males and females underestimating the relative abilities of females. Rather than finding that women shy away from competition, this study presents evidence that incorrect beliefs about the ability distribution cause the appearance of gender differences in preferences for competition in the laboratory. Thus, this study does not find evidence to support the hypothesis that the gender gap in the distribution of high profile jobs is related to differences in competitive preferences.