We evaluate the impact of a recent reform that sharply increased the salaries of Italian local politicians on electoral competition and the valence attributes of the candidates elected. Exploiting misaligned election dates across Italian cities, we propose a novel methodology, the time-shifted...

Hospitals, schools, councils and other parts of the public sector are a major employer in Scotland. The public sector paybill is also a substantial part of government spending. Recent years have seen larger-than-expected increases in both public sector employment and pay, the latter driven by...

We evaluate a political reform in Portugal that introduced individual teacher performancerelated pay and tournaments in public schools. We find that the focus on individual performance decreased student achievement, as measured in national exams, and increased grade inflation. The results follow...

Upon the authorities' request, the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department provided technical assistance to Palau on reforming government employment and compensation policies. Palau is facing significant challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified staff for essential public services due to...

Public sector jobs are established by governments to directly provide goods and services. Governments may also choose to regulate the size of the public sector in order to stabilize targeted national employment levels. However, economic research suggests that these effects are uncertain and...

We investigate an agent-based model for the emergence of corruption in public contracts. Thereare two types of agents: business people and public servants. Both business people and publicservants can adopt two strategies: corrupt or honest behavior. Interactions between businesspeople and public...

Mali's wage bill has soared to levels not seen since the early 1990s. This may cause considerable opportunity costs-limiting fiscal space and potentially adding to inflationary pressures-as well as adversely affect medium-term debt sustainability as it weighs heavily on the primary deficit. This...

We set up a search and matching model with a private and a public sector to understand the effects of employment and wage policies in the public sector on unemployment and education decisions. The effects on the educational composition of the labor force depend crucially on the structure of the...

Da die Beamtenpopulation deutlich älter als die Gesamtbevölkerung ist, gehen die kohortenstarken Jahrgänge bereits in den Ruhestand. Allein in den letzten 10 Jahren haben sich die jährlichen Versorgungsausgaben der Gebietskörperschaften um 50 Prozent erhöht, wovon insbesondere die...

Kuwaiti women working in Kuwait's civil service earn, on average, 18 percent less than Kuwaiti men. Using a unique data set of all Kuwaiti nationals working in Kuwait's civil service, this paper analyzes the relationship between wages, gender, and the relative dominance of women in occupations...

This paper studies the wage differentials between the public and private sectors in Spain, as well as its distribution across different educational levels and by gender. To do so, the well-known Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of mincerian wage regressions is applied for both sectors, breaking down...

We provide the first empirical analysis of gubernatorial pay. Using US data for 1950-90 we document, contrary to widespread assumptions, substantial variation in the wages of politicians, both across states and over time. Gubernatorial wages respond to changes in state income per capita and...

This paper studies the wage differentials between the public and private sectors in Spain, as well as its distribution across different educational levels and by gender. To do so, the well-known Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of mincerian wage regressions is applied for both sectors, breaking down...

This paper performs a longitudinal comparison of public and private sector pay. Although not decisive because of small sample sizes, the results tend to corroborate the conclusions of previous cross-sectional studies. Specifically, I find that on average wages of federal workers exceed those of...

Proponents of comparable worth assert that within a firm jobs can be valued in terms of the skill, effort and responsibility they require, as well as the working conditions they offer, and that jobs that are of comparable worth to the firm should receive equal compensation. After documenting the...

The private sector in Bangladesh is a comparatively much larger component of the economy since the adaptation of privatization policies in the 1980s. After the latest pay scale (National Pay Scale 2015) in Bangladesh, public sector jobs have demanded the significant attention of prospective job...

Performance appraisal is a system whereby workers’ contributions to organizational objectives are accessed either quarterly or annually. This performance appraisal exercise has been grossly abused in many organizations, so competent and highly skilled workers have been frustrated out of many...

We examine the labor supply of politicians using data on Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). We exploit the introduction of a law that equalized MEPs' salaries, which had previously differed by as much as a factor of ten. Doubling an MEP's salary increases the probability of running for...

This study analyzes a new set of data on the decisions of conventional arbitrators. The main goal is to draw inferences about the extent to which conventional arbitration decisions are fashioned as mechanical compromises of the parties' final offers, without reference to the exogenous facts...

In the United States, equal pay is defined as a basic human right. Salary negotiation and other areas of the hiring process must also be structured within this human rights construct in order to fully achieve equality and its corresponding societal benefits. This Article applies New York City...

Recent studies have emphasized the importance of the quality of politicians for good government and consequently economic performance. But if the quality of leadership matters, then understanding what motivates individuals to become politicians and perform competently in office becomes a central...

We estimate the public wage gap in France for the period 1990-2002, both at the mean and at different quantiles of the wage distribution, for men and women separately. We account for unobserved heterogeneity by using fixed effects estimations on panel data and, departing from usual practice,...