The wage premium in the public sector, as measured by the ratio of the average wage rate in the public sector relative to the average wage rate in the private sector, varies considerably across developed economies. And, varies in some developed economies over large periods of time. Further, this...

Labour market regulation can have harmful unintended consequences. In many markets, especially for public sector workers, pay is regulated to be the same for individuals across heterogeneous geographical labour markets. We would predict that this will mean labour supply problems and potential...

The existing literature on inequality between private and public sectors focuses on cross-section differences in earnings levels. A more general way of looking at inequality between sectors is to recognize that forward-looking agents will care about income and job mobility too. We show that...

This paper addresses the role played by Public Sector (PS) employment across different OECD labour markets in explaining: (i) gender differences regarding occupational choices in either PS or private sector, and (ii) subsequent changes in female labour market outcomes. To do so, we provide some...

In this paper we examine the causal impact of competition on management quality. We analyze the hospital sector where geographic proximity is a key determinant of competition, and English public hospitals where political competition can be used to construct instrumental variables for market...

Based on a rich personnel data set of a large university we find strong evidence for the existence of an internal labor market. First, the lowest academic rank is a strong port of entry and the highest rank is a port of exit. Second, wages do not follow external wage developments, since they...

This Paper presents a methodology to identify net demand shocks as well as wage rigidities in heterogeneous labour markets on the basis of nonparametric regression. We show how this approach can be used to make suggestions for immigration policy in economies with labour market rigidities. In an...

We present a structural framework for the evaluation of public policies intended to increase job search intensity. Most of the literature defines search intensity as a scalar that influences the arrival rate of job offers; here we treat it as the number of job applications that workers send out....

This paper addresses a lack of evidence on the impact of performance pay in the public sector by evaluating a pilot scheme of incentives in a major government agency. The incentive scheme was based on teams and covered quantity and quality targets, measured with varying degrees of precision. We...

This Paper presents firm level evidence on the dynamics of non-manual wage premia and employment shares in Italian manufacturing during the nineties. We find that the relative stability of aggregate wage premia and employment shares hides offsetting disaggregate forces. First, while technical...