This paper investigates how state and local fiscal institutions affect the pattern of relative wages between state and local government employees and their private sector counterparts. It focuses on changes in relative wages during the 1979-1986 period. Empirical analysis of data from the Current Population Survey suggests that in places with limitations on local property taxes, and to a lesser extent state-level tax and expenditure caps, public sector wages grew more slowly than the wages paid to comparable workers in the private sector. The differential movement of public sector and private sector wages is particularly pronounced for college-educated women who work in the local public sector. Many of these employees are public school teachers. There is some evidence that the impact of fiscal limits is most pronounced in the years immediately following their adoption, and that the effect of these limits weakens over time.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
6659.
Length: Date of creation: Jul 1998 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6659
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H73 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Interjurisdictional Differentials and Their Effects J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
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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.:
Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Joshua L. Schwarz, 1987.
"Public Sector Labor Markets,"
NBER Working Papers
1179, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Ehrenberg, Ronald G. & Schwarz, Joshua L., 1987.
"Public-sector labor markets,"
Handbook of Labor Economics,
in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 1219-1260
Elsevier.
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