We examine differences in altruism and laziness between public sector employees and private sector employees. Our theoretical model predicts that the likelihood of public sector employment increases with a worker's altruism, and increases or decreases with a worker's laziness depending on his...

This research note uses two German data sets - the large-scale German Socio-Economic Panel and unique data from own student questionnaires - to analyse the relationship between risk aversion and the choice for public sector employment. Main results are: (1) more risk averse individuals sort into...