The main purpose of this paper consists in quantifying the impact of a minimum wage
adjustment upon wage inequality in Romania. In general, rigorous minimum wage impact assessment
upon wage distribution is quite difficult to conduct mainly because of data access limitations to
longitudinal information available at individuals‘ level. In this paper an innovative approach is
proposed for building a counterfactual scenario through the use of quarterly survey micro-data
provided by the National Institute of Statistics. The period analysed in this paper regards the timeinterval
Q2 2014-Q3 2014. There are several reasons for this choice. First, it concerns data
availability restrictions and second, the need to identify two consecutive periods corresponding to a
window-frame right before a minimum wage adjustment and immediately after it took place. In order
to check the impact on gender wage inequalities, a 1:1 matching procedure was applied for the
construction of two distinct gender groups of individuals that were similar in observable
characteristics. Both socio-demographic and economic factors are considered. When comparing the
changes registered right after the minimum wage adjustment, we noticed a reduction in gender wage
inequalities, as males‘ chances to earn more in comparison to females drop
