Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

The public-private pay gap: a robust quantile approach

Contents:

Author Info

  • Domenico Depalo

    () (Bank of Italy)

  • Raffaela Giordano

    () (Bank of Italy)

Abstract

This paper investigates whether a public sector premium exists after controlling for observable characteristics and for additional motivations, other than monetary, that may induce workers to prefer employment in the public sector. We study the entire conditional wage distribution on Italian micro data, covering the period 1998-2008. The evidence under random sampling shows the existence of a wage differential averaging at about 14% for women and 4% for men, generally lower at the high tail of the wage distribution and in the Northern regions. The premium significantly increases when possible sorting is considered; the correction is particularly large above the median of the wage distribution, therefore suggesting that the additional motivations may play an important role above all at higher wage levels. When we restrict our comparison to large private firms, a differential is confirmed for women but not for men.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/econo/temidi/td11/td824_11/en_td824/en_tema_824.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area in its series Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) with number 824.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Sep 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_824_11

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Via Nazionale, 91 - 00184 Roma
Web page: http://www.bancaditalia.it
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: public employment; wage differentials; wage determination;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Don Bellante & Albert N. Link, 1981. "Are public sector workers more risk averse than private sector workers?," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 34(3), pages 408-412, April.
  2. Bender, Keith A, 1998. " The Central Government-Private Sector Wage Differential," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(2), pages 177-220, April.
  3. Fabien Postel-Vinay & Hélène Turon, 2005. "The Public Pay Gap in Britain: Small Differences That (Don't?) Matter," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 05/121, Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
  4. Lucifora C. & Meurs D., 2004. "The Public Sector Pay Gap in France, Great Britain and Italy," Working Papers ERMES 0403, ERMES, University Paris 2.
  5. Pedro Portugal & Mário Centeno, 2001. "Wages of Civil Servants," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
  6. Koenker,Roger, 2005. "Quantile Regression," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521845731.
  7. Chernozhukov, Victor & Hansen, Christian & Jansson, Michael, 2007. "Inference approaches for instrumental variable quantile regression," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 272-277, May.
  8. Breusch, Trevor & Qian, Hailong & Schmidt, Peter & Wyhowski, Donald, 1999. "Redundancy of moment conditions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 89-111, July.
  9. Bargain, Olivier & Melly, Blaise, 2008. "Public Sector Pay Gap in France: New Evidence Using Panel Data," IZA Discussion Papers 3427, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  10. Heyes, Anthony, 2005. "The economics of vocation or 'why is a badly paid nurse a good nurse'?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 561-569, May.
  11. Holmlund, Bertil, 1993. "Wage setting in private and public sectors in a model with endogenous government behavior," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 149-162, May.
  12. Gregory, Robert G. & Borland, Jeff, 1999. "Recent developments in public sector labor markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 53, pages 3573-3630 Elsevier.
  13. repec:sae:pubfin:v:35:y:2007:i:5:p:572-585 is not listed on IDEAS
  14. Joshua Angrist & Victor Chernozhukov & Ivan Fernandez-Val, 2004. "Quantile Regression under Misspecification, with an Application to the U.S. Wage Structure," NBER Working Papers 10428, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  15. Dustmann, Christian & van Soest, Arthur, 1998. "Public and private sector wages of male workers in Germany," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(8), pages 1417-1441, September.
  16. Hausman, Jerry A, 1978. "Specification Tests in Econometrics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1251-71, November.
  17. Dell'Aringa, Carlo & Lucifora, Claudio & Origo, Federica, 2005. "Public Sector Pay and Regional Competitiveness: A First Look at Regional Public-Private Wage Differentials in Italy," IZA Discussion Papers 1828, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  18. Blaise Melly, 2005. "Public-private sector wage differentials in Germany: Evidence from quantile regression," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 505-520, 09.
  19. Walter Fogel & David Lewin, 1974. "Wage determination in the public sector," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 27(3), pages 410-431, April.
  20. Niskanen, William A, 1975. "Bureaucrats and Politicians," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 617-43, December.
  21. Carlo V Fiorio & Francesco D'Amuri, 2005. "Workers' Tax Evasion in Italy," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 64(2-3), pages 247-270, November.
  22. Francesca Barigozzi & Gilberto Turati, 2009. "Human Health Care and Selection Effects. Understanding Labour Supply in the Market for Nurses," CHILD Working Papers wp18_09, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.
  23. Lorenzo Forni & Raffaela Giordano, 2003. "Employment in the Public Sector," CESifo Working Paper Series 1085, CESifo Group Munich.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_824_11

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.