We uncover the short- and long-run structural determinants of the existing cross-country heterogeneity in public-private pay differentials for a broad set of OECD countries. We explore micro data (EU-SILC, 2004–2012) and macro data (1970–2014). Three results stand out. First, when looking at...

The public sector hires disproportionately more educated workers. To rationalize this finding, we propose a model with a perfectly competitive private sector, and non-Walrasian public sector. Our economy also features heterogeneity across individuals and jobs, and a simple sorting mechanism that...

This paper analyses the entire wage effects of unemployment for an especially long observation period. In a three‐step approach, the wage reaction at the national level (wage‐setting curve or aggregate wage equation) is added to the reaction at the regional level (wage curve). Spatial models...

Public sector jobs are created because governments opt to provide goods and services produced directly by public employees. Governments, however, may also choose to regulate the size of the public sector in order to stabilize targeted national employment levels. However, economic research...

We investigate whether public and private sector employees differ in terms of public service motivation using a representative sample of elderly workers from 12 European countries. We find that public sector workers, both those currently employed and those already retired, are significantly more...

The earnings of the largest professional group financed with public resources, which participates in the realization and financing of the most common and the most expensive public service is the cause of industrial disputes on one hand, and pay aspirations on the other. At the same time the...

This study investigates the public-private sector wage gap in Latvia using microdata from the labour force survey. The severity of public sector wage cuts employed as a response to the economic crisis and subsequent recovery provides a test bed to analyse whether and how the public-private...

This work explores that Brazilian public firms were allowed to hire workers either as statutory ("civil servants") as well as under private market labor regime ("CLT"). We use RAIS that matches employer-employee data for all formal firms in Brazil from 2014 to 2016 to control for fixed effects...

Direct wage comparisons show that public-sector employees earn around 15% more than private-sector employees. But should these differences be interpreted as a "public-sector premium"? Two points need to be considered. First, the public and private sectors differ in the jobs they offer and the...