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Public wage differentials and the treatment of occupational differences
Author(s) -
Belman Dale,
Heywood John S.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of policy analysis and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.898
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1520-6688
pISSN - 0276-8739
DOI - 10.1002/pam.10183
Subject(s) - differential (mechanical device) , earnings , wage , public sector , distribution (mathematics) , government (linguistics) , economics , labour economics , demographic economics , public policy , accounting , economic growth , economy , engineering , mathematics , mathematical analysis , linguistics , philosophy , aerospace engineering
Past research demonstrates that the estimated size of the federal government earnings differential shrinkssubstantially with the addition of detailed occupational controls. Possible explanations for this reduction are:controlling for the differing sectoral distributions of common occupations, and controlling for detailedoccupations unique to each sector. While occupational detail does not eliminate the federal differential, morethan two‐thirds of the reduction in the federal differential comes from controlling for unique occupationsand, moreover, this is equivalent to excluding all observations in unique occupations. This finding is contrastedwith that for the local sector in which the differing distribution of common occupations largely explains thepattern of the differential. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.