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Meritocracy, Public-Sector Pay and Human Capital Accumulation

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  • Andri Chassamboulli
  • Pedro Gomes

Abstract

We set up a model with search and matching frictions to understand the effects of employment and wage policies, as well as non-meritocratic hiring in the public sector, on unemployment, rent seeking and education decisions. Wages and employment of skilled and unskilled public-sector workers affect educational attainment; the extent of that effect depends on the structure of the labor market and how non-meritocratic public-sector hiring is. Conditional on inefficiently high public-sector wages, less-meritocratic hiring in the public sector lowers the unemployment rate and might raise welfare because it limits the size of queues for public-sector jobs. Public-sector wage and employment policies impose an endogenous constraint on the number of workers the government can hire through connections.

Suggested Citation

  • Andri Chassamboulli & Pedro Gomes, 2018. "Meritocracy, Public-Sector Pay and Human Capital Accumulation," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 08-2018, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucy:cypeua:08-2018
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    File URL: https://papers.econ.ucy.ac.cy/RePEc/papers/08-18.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Almarina Gramozi & Theodore Palivos & Marios Zachariadis, 2019. "Talent Misallocation in Europe," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 05-2019, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    3. Germana Bottone, 2018. "A tax on robots? Some food for thought," Working Papers wp2018-3, Ministry of Economy and Finance, Department of Finance.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public-sector employment; meritocracy; public-sector wages; unemployment; skilled workers; human capital accumulation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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