Estimation of the mincerian wage model addressing its specification and different econometric issues
In the present doctoral thesis, we estimated Mincer’s (1974) semi logarithmic wage function for the French and Pakistani labour force data. This model is considered as a standard tool in order to estimate the relationship between earnings/wages and different contributory factors. Despite of its vide and extensive use, simple estimation of the Mincerian model is biased because of different econometric problems. The main sources of bias noted in the literature are endogeneity of schooling, measurement error, and sample selectivity. We have tackled the endogeneity and measurement error biases via instrumental variables two stage least squares approach for which we have proposed two new instrumental variables. The first instrumental variable is defined as "the average years of schooling in the family of the concerned individual" and the second instrumental variable is defined as "the average years of schooling in the country, of particular age group, of particular gender, at the particular time when an individual had joined the labour force". Schooling is found to be endogenous for the both countries. Comparing two said instruments we have selected second instrument to be more appropriate. We have applied the Heckman (1979) two-step procedure to eliminate possible sample selection bias which found to be significantly positive for the both countries which means that in the both countries, people who decided not to participate in labour force as wage worker would have earned less than participants if they had decided to work as wage earner. We have estimated a specification that tackled endogeneity and sample selectivity problems together as we found in respect to present literature relative scarcity of such studies all over the globe in general and absence of such studies for France and Pakistan, in particular. Differences in coefficients proved worth of such specification. We have also estimated model semi-parametrically, but contrary to general norm in the context of the Mincerian model, our semi-parametric estimation contained non-parametric component from first-stage schooling equation instead of non-parametric component from selection equation. For both countries, we have found parametric model to be more appropriate. We found errors to be heteroscedastic for the data from both countries and then applied adaptive estimation to control adverse effects of heteroscedasticity. Comparing simple and adaptive estimations, we prefer adaptive specification of parametric model for both countries. Finally, we have applied quantile regression on the selected model from mean regression. Quantile regression exposed that different explanatory factors influence differently in different parts of the wage distribution of the two countries. For both Pakistan and France, it would be the first study that corrected both sample selectivity and endogeneity in single specification in quantile regression framework