Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
This paper examines the appropriate use of cross-section microdata in life cycle models. Drawing upon recent empirical work based upon panel data, we illustrate how these results can be used as priors to generate a distribution of life cycle earnings. Such a surrogate distribution can be shown to possess the same properties as actual distributions. We focus attention particularly upon the treatment of economic growth and the unobservable components of earnings. In the final section of the paper, we show how such distributions might be used in inequality analysis.