In this paper we assess the impact of a variety of policies that may influence the career decisions of members of the U.S. Congress, using the empirical framework of Diermeier, Keane and Merlo (2005). These policies alter incentives to run for re-election, run for higher office or leave...

Tenured public officials such as judges are often thought to be indifferent to the concerns of the electorate and, as a result, potentially lacking in discipline but unlikely to pander to public opinion. We investigate this proposition empirically using data on promotion decisions taken by...

The tax office wins most cases in Japan. We think about why this might be. We find that although judges who rule in favor of the taxpayer do not suffer in their future careers, if the loser - whether governemnt or taxpayer - appeals and wins, the reversed judge's career does take a turn for the...

We analyze the dynamics of worker mobility in the United States over the 1968-1993 period at various levels of occupational and industry aggregation. We find a substantial overall increase in occupational and industry mobility over the period and document the levels and time trends in mobility...

Italy's secondary school system has faced funding constraints for many years which limits availability of new permanent job slots for teachers. When permanent posts do arise they are allocated mostly on seniority while merit only plays a small role. Thus, the age distribution of teachers in...

Using a simple theoretical model we conjecture that dual practice may increase the number of patients seen but reduce hours spent at public facilities, if public physicians lack motivation and/or if their opportunity costs are very large. Using data from Indonesia, we then test these theoretical...

In this paper, using a dynamic panel of 21 OECD countries, we find that, unlike the other OECD countries in the sample, wage setting institutions, competition conditions, public finances, and external imbalances can account for the behavior of the public sector wage premium (WPR) and the...

En los países en desarrollo, la distribución desigual de la calidad de los docentes es un problema que subyace a la distribución desigual de los logros educativos. Sin embargo, poco se sabe sobre cómo el mercado laboral genera este tipo de distribución. Para contribuir a este tipo de...

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the intrinsic preferences of state appellate court judges. We construct a panel data set using published decisions from state supreme court cases merged with institutional and biographical information on all (1,700) state supreme court...

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between officeholder and the electorate, where everyone is initially uninformed about the officeholder’s ability. If office-holder effort and ability interact in the determination of performance in office, then an office-holder has...