TY  - JOUR
AU  - Blackburn,McKinley
AU  - Neumark,David
TI  - Unobserved Ability, Efficiency Wages, and Interindustry Wage Differentials
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3857
PY  - 1991
Y2  - October 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3857
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3857.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David Neumark
Department of Economics
University of California at Irvine
3151 Social Science Plaza
Irvine, CA  92697
Tel: 949-824-8496
Fax: 949/824-2182
E-Mail: dneumark@uci.edu
AB  - Interindustry wage differentials in wage regressions estimated for individuals have been interpreted as evidence consistent with efficiency wage models. A principal competing explanation is that these differentials are generated by differences across workers in unobserved ability. This paper tests the unobserved ability hypothesis .by incorporating test scores into standard wage regressions as error-ridden indicators of unobserved ability. The results indicate that differences in unobserved ability explain relatively little of interindustry or interoccupation wage differentials.
ER  -