IMPUTATION OF FEMALE LABOR-MARKET EXPERIENCE - SOME AUSTRALIAN EVIDENCE ON THE ZABALZA AND ARRUFAT METHOD

Recent empirical studies of gender discrimination point to the importa nce of accurately controlling for accumulated labour market experience . Unfortunately in Australia, most data sets do not include informatio n on actual experience. The current paper using data from the National Social Science Survey 1984, examines the efficacy of imputing female labour marker experience via the Zabalza and Arrufat (1985) method. Th e results suggest that the method provides a more accurate measure of experience than that provided by the traditional Mincer proxy. However , the imputation method is sensitive to the choice of identification r estrictions. We suggest a novel alternative to a choice between arbitr ary restrictions.