This paper surveys the economics literature on the minimum wage effects in the United States and Colombia, and the Colombian and international experiences regarding to the institutions and practices related to the setting of the minimum wage.The review of the experiences from this perspective leads to some conjectures about the relative inflexibility of the Latin American institutions with respect to the United States and Western Europe´s norms and procedures.Regardless of the high incidence of the minimum wage in Colombia, there is a shortage of research about its effects on some crucial dimensions.It seems that the minimum wage has been used, may be in excess, outside of the labor market as indexation mechanism.