This paper evaluates the impact of public employment on private sector activity using the relocation of the German federal government from Berlin to Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous variation. To guide our empirical analysis, we develop a simple economic...

The present study examines the public-private sector wage gap in South Africa using individual cross section data for 2000-7. Results from unconditional quantile regressions and generalised Oaxaca-Blinder type decompositions show that the wage gap is inverted-U shaped across the wage...

We analyze the optimal regional pattern of public employment in an information-constrained second-best redistribution policy showing that regionally differentiated public employment can serve as an expenditure side tagging device, bypassing or relaxing the equity-efficiency trade-off. The...

The effectiveness of public funds in increasing public employment has long been a question on public and labor economists' minds. In most federal countries local governments employ large fractions of the working population, meaning that a tool for stimulating local public employment can...

We propose an assignment model in which positions along a hierarchy are attributed to individuals depending on their characteristics. Our theoretical framework can be used to study differences in assignment and outcomes across groups and we show how it can motivate decomposition and...

We develop a model with two asymmetric countries. Firms choose the number and the location of plants that they operate. The production of each firm increases when trade costs fall. The fall also induces multinationals to repatriate their production into a single country, which is likely to be...

We examine the changing relationship between unionization and wage inequality in Canada and the United States. Our study is motivated by profound recent changes in the composition of the unionized workforce. Historically, union jobs were concentrated among low-skilled men in private sector...

We investigate the public-private wage differential in India using nationally representative micro data. While the existing literature focuses on average wage differential, we study the differences in the wage distributions. The raw wage differential between public and private sector is positive...

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