WASHINGTON — The National Restaurant Association did not disclose upfront its role in helping draft and circulate a statement signed by more than 500 prominent economists, including four winners of the Nobel Prize, urging the federal government to reject the proposal by the Obama administration to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, interviews with signers of the letter showed.

The statement was distributed to prominent economists nationwide under the name of Vernon L. Smith, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of economics and law at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., concluding that the minimum wage “is a poorly targeted antipoverty measure.”

Its release last week was intended to coincide with a Senate hearing on the proposed increase, which business groups, including the National Restaurant Association, oppose, saying it would force them to raise prices or cut employment because a portion of their work force is paid the minimum wage.

The $10.10 proposal, endorsed by the White House and leading Democrats in Congress but opposed by many Republicans, would increase the federal minimum wage, in phases over two and a half years, from the current $7.25.