IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/labeco/v19y2012i1p68-75.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Towards a theory of the labor market with a public sector

Author

Listed:
  • Burdett, Ken

Abstract

The object is to specify and analyze equilibrium in a labor market with frictions when there is a significant public sector. In the vast majority of equilibrium studies on labor markets, a public sector has been ruled out by assumption. This seems a strange oversight as about 17% of workers in the US are public sector workers, whereas in western Europe, approximately 22% of workers work in the public sector. The goal in this study is to provide answers to such questions as: what happens to private sector wages if the public sector is increased? If the Government increases the number of public sector jobs, does this crowd out private sector jobs? When will private sector wages be greater (less) than the public sector wage? Reasonably complete answers to these questions (and others) are provided within the context of the model developed.

Suggested Citation

  • Burdett, Ken, 2012. "Towards a theory of the labor market with a public sector," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 68-75.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:68-75
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2011.07.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537111000844
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.labeco.2011.07.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dale Mortensen & Eva Nagypal, 2007. "More on Unemployment and Vacancy Fluctuations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(3), pages 327-347, July.
    2. George J. Borjas, 2002. "The Wage Structure and the Sorting of Workers into the Public Sector," NBER Working Papers 9313, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Marcus Hagedorn & Iourii Manovskii, 2008. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies Revisited," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1692-1706, September.
    4. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    5. Burdett, Kenneth & Mortensen, Dale T, 1998. "Wage Differentials, Employer Size, and Unemployment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(2), pages 257-273, May.
    6. Mortensen, Dale T. & Pissarides, Christopher A., 1999. "New developments in models of search in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 39, pages 2567-2627, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fontaine, Idriss & Gálvez-Iniesta, Ismael & Gomes, Pedro & Vila-Martin, Diego, 2020. "Labour market flows: Accounting for the public sector," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    2. Jofre-Monseny, Jordi & Silva, José I. & Vázquez-Grenno, Javier, 2020. "Local labor market effects of public employment," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    3. Caponi, Vincenzo, 2017. "Public employment policies and regional unemployment differences," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 1-12.
    4. Yassin, Shaimaa & Langot, François, 2018. "Informality, public employment and employment protection in developing countries," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 326-348.
    5. 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.
    6. Gaston, Noel & Yoshimi, Taiyo, 2023. "The Balassa-Samuelson model with job separations," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    7. Telegdy, Álmos, 2018. "Public wage spillovers: The role of individual characteristics and employer wage policies," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 116-129.
    8. Faggio, Giulia & Overman, Henry, 2014. "The effect of public sector employment on local labour markets," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 91-107.
    9. Andri Chassamboulli & Pedro Gomes, 2019. "Public-Sector Employment, Wages and Human Capital Accumulation," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 07-2019, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    10. Feng, Shuaizhang & Guo, Naijia, 2021. "Labor market dynamics in urban China and the role of the state sector," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 918-932.
    11. Geromichalos, Athanasios & Kospentaris, Ioannis, 2022. "The unintended consequences of meritocratic government hiring," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    12. Chassamboulli, Andri & Gomes, Pedro, 2023. "Public-sector employment, wages and education decisions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    13. Claire Boeing-Reicher & Vincenzo Caponi, 2024. "Public wages, public employment, and business cycle volatility: Evidence from U.S. metro areas," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 54, October.
    14. Pedro Gomes, 2018. "Heterogeneity And The Public Sector Wage Policy," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 59(3), pages 1469-1489, August.
    15. Jelena Lausev, 2014. "WHAT HAS 20 YEARS OF PUBLIC–PRIVATE PAY GAP LITERATURE TOLD US? EASTERN EUROPEAN TRANSITIONING vs. DEVELOPED ECONOMIES," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 516-550, July.
    16. Ija Trapeznikova & Juan Pablo Rud, 2015. "Wage Dispersion, Job Creation and Development: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa," 2015 Meeting Papers 1005, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Andri Chassamboulli & Pedro Gomes, 2021. "Jumping the queue: nepotism and public-sector pay," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 344-366, January.
    18. Bettoni, Luis G. & Santos, Marcelo R., 2022. "Public sector employment and aggregate fluctuations," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    19. Dai, Tiantian & He, Chao & Jiang, Shenyi, 2023. "Talent in the public sector: The role of migration and housing policies," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Burgess, Simon & Turon, Hélène, 2010. "Worker flows, job flows and unemployment in a matching model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 393-408, April.
    2. Morvay, Endre, 2012. "Munkapiac keresési súrlódásokkal [Job-seeking on the labour market, with frictions]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(2), pages 139-163.
    3. Koenig, Felix & Manning, Alan & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2014. "Reservation wages and the wage flexibility puzzle," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 60613, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Peter Diamond, 2011. "Unemployment, Vacancies, Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1045-1072, June.
    5. Isabel Cairó & Tomaz Cajner, 2018. "Human Capital and Unemployment Dynamics: Why More Educated Workers Enjoy Greater Employment Stability," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(609), pages 652-682, March.
    6. Yashiv, Eran, 2007. "Labor search and matching in macroeconomics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(8), pages 1859-1895, November.
    7. Simon Jäger & Benjamin Schoefer & Samuel Young & Josef Zweimüller, 2020. "Wages and the Value of Nonemployment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(4), pages 1905-1963.
    8. Leo Kaas & Philipp Kircher, 2015. "Efficient Firm Dynamics in a Frictional Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3030-3060, October.
    9. Steven J. Davis & Till Von Wachter, 2011. "Recessions and the Costs of Job Loss," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(2 (Fall)), pages 1-72.
    10. Petrosky-Nadeau, Nicolas & Wasmer, Etienne, 2015. "Macroeconomic dynamics in a model of goods, labor, and credit market frictions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 97-113.
    11. R. Jason Faberman & Andreas I. Mueller & Ayşegül Şahin & Giorgio Topa, 2022. "Job Search Behavior Among the Employed and Non‐Employed," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1743-1779, July.
    12. Hector Sala & José I. Silva & Manuel Toledo, 2012. "Flexibility at the Margin and Labor Market Volatility in OECD Countries," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(3), pages 991-1017, September.
    13. Ryan Michaels & David Ratner & Michael Elsby, 2016. "Vacancy Chains," 2016 Meeting Papers 753, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Masters, Adrian, 2016. "On the firms’ component of wage dispersion: Endogenous effort versus search frictions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 213-220.
    15. Campolmi, Alessia & Gnocchi, Stefano, 2016. "Labor market participation, unemployment and monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 17-29.
    16. Rogerson, Richard & Shimer, Robert, 2011. "Search in Macroeconomic Models of the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 7, pages Pages: 61, Elsevier.
    17. Marcin Woźniak, 2015. "Can the Stochastic Equilibrium Job Search Models Fit Transition Economies?," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 65(4), pages 567-591, December.
    18. Tsasa, Jean-Paul K., 2022. "Labor market volatility in a fully specified RBC search model: An analytical investigation," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    19. Steven J. Davis & Till Von Wachter, 2011. "Recessions and the Costs of Job Loss," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(2 (Fall)), pages 1-72.
    20. Hertweck Matthias Sebastian, 2013. "Strategic wage bargaining, labor market volatility, and persistence," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 123-149, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:68-75. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/labeco .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.