Accessing the new earnings survey panel: Efficient techniques and applications

摘要

The New Earnings Survey Panel Dataset is one of the largest datasets of its kind in the world. udIts size and confidentiality restrictions present considerable difficulties for analysis using udstandard econometric packages. ud udThis thesis presents a number of methods for accessing the information held within the panel udrelatively efficiently, based upon the use of cross-product matrices and on data compression udtechniques. These methods allow, for the first time, the panel aspect of the dataset to be used udin analysis. The techniques described here are then employed to produce an overview of udchanges in the UK labour market from 1975 to 1990 and detailed estimates of male and female udearnings over a fourteen year period. These are the first panel estimates on the dataset. The udestimates indicate the importance of allowing the parameters of any labour market model to udvary over time, which is significant as panel estimators typically impose structural stability on udthe coefficients. Some preliminary estimates of the male-female wage gap indicate that both udheterogeneity and variation over time have an important part to play in accounting for the uddifferences in wages.