This paper examines the public sector wage premium using nationally representative household surveys from 91 countries. The public sector generally pays a wage premium compared to all private sector salaried employees, but the size of the premium is sensitive to the choice of the private sector...

In many developing countries (and beyond), public sector workers are not just simply implementers of policies designed by the politicians in charge of supervising them-so called agents and principals, respectively. Public sector workers can have the power to influence whether politicians are...