Identification in Detailed Wage Decompositions
指出标准工资分解方法在估计虚拟变量对未解释部分的单独贡献时结果不唯一，依赖于参照组选择；但解释部分和总体分解不受影响。对劳动经济学研究者有参考价值。
The standard wage decomposition methodology produces arbitrary results when attempting to estimate the separate contributions of sets of dummy variables to the unexplained portion of the wage decomposition: the estimates are not invariant with respect to the choice of reference groups. However, the estimated separate contributions of sets of dummy variables to the explained portion and the overall decomposition are shown not to be dependent upon the choice of left-out reference groups. A similar identification problem applies to continuous variables, although this may not be as likely to cause problems in practice. © 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology