Economists use average wage differentials to examine whether public- and private-sector workers have comparable earnings. Such average differentials, originally developed for other purposes, fail to measure the true distance from comparability. In short, if average earnings in the public and...

Despite large separate literatures, the influence of establishment (plant) and firm size on wages has not been combined with estimation of public wage differentials. We find that doing so alters the estimated public differentials at each level of government. Federal workers in particular appear...

A decline in pension coverage during the 1980s for males in the private sector is confirmed and is contrasted with the federal, state, and local sectors in which no such decline is found. As a consequence, the governmental advantage in the probability of coverage grew over the 1980s. This...