Examining Equality between Public- and Private-Sector Wage Distributions

Author: K.A. Bender

Source: Economic Inquiry, Volume 41, Number 1, 1 January 2003 , pp. 62-79(18)

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Abstract:

Most comparability studies examine average pay differences, but this article explores differences in the distribution of public- and private-sector wages. Applying a new type of decomposition method, the results indicate that the difference in average wages is only a small part of wage incomparability, whereas differences in the variance of the differential are a much more important factor explaining incomparability. Further results find that differences in wage structure and unobservable factors determining wages have distinct effects in different parts of the wage distribution.

Document Type: Original article

Affiliations: 1: Bender: Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, PO Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201 and Research Fellow, Centre for European Labour Market Research, University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Publication date: 2003-01-01

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Economic Inquiry is a well-respected, general economics journal. Publishing four issues per year, its papers are of high quality and endeavour to make each article easily accessible to economists who are not necessarily specialists in the article's topic area. Authors are mostly from the US, primarily from the Western regions of the States, but papers are regularly published by authors from outside the US.