Decomposing Wage Residuals: Unmeasured Skill or Statistical Artifact?
指出，用标准差和百分位排名分解工资残差可能产生误导，因为两者不独立；工资不平等上升时，低工资组的平均百分位排名会自然上升，这解释了性别和种族工资差距的稳定性，而非未测量技能的变化。
The decomposition of wage residuals into standard deviation and percentile ranks can be misleading because the two measures are not necessarily independent. With rising wage inequality, the mean percentile rank of low-wage groups will rise simply because more dispersed distributions have thicker tails. This interpretation is consistent with the observed stability of gender and racial wage gaps. In contrast, the unmeasured skill interpretation of wage residuals would predict widening wage gaps in the face of rising wage inequality, unless one posits an increase in the level of unobserved skill for women and blacks.