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...

It is well-established that Arab labor markets share certain common characteristics, including an oversized public sector, high youth unemployment, weak private sectors, rapidly growing but highly distorted educational attainment, and low and stagnant female labor force participation. I argue in...

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...

We estimate the public-private sector pay gap for 27 European countries, using the 2008 EU SILC. The coefficients of conditional (on personal and job characteristics) public sector controls give a first impression on wage differences, while decompositions into explained and unexplained...

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...

This paper updates the available evidence on the public-private wage gap in Spain, which dates back to 2012. Through microdata drawn from the last three waves of the Wage Structure Survey (2010, 2014 and 2018), we study how this gap and its distribution by gender and education have evolved...

Outsourcing public provision of services tends to lower labor intensity and increase its efficiency. Costs are usually lower, but quality problems can affect services like health care and residential youth care. Consumer choice has stimulated innovation in education, but the picture is ambiguous...

Employees show more commitment to an employer that promotes the greater good, and they work harder too. Moreover, many people are willing to give up some of their compensation to contribute to a social cause. Being able to attract a motivated workforce would be particularly important for the...

Concerns about poor student performance have led schools to diverge from traditional teacher compensation and base a portion of pay on student outcomes. In the US, the number of school districts adopting such performancebased financial incentives has increased by more than 40% since 2004....