IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/ifauwp/2004_011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public employment and the double role of bureaucrats

Author

Listed:
  • Dahlberg, Matz

    (IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation)

  • Mörk, Eva

    (IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation)

Abstract

Bureaucrats in the government sector have a double role since they are both suppliers and demanders of public employment; they are publicly employed (supply labor) and they have an important say in deciding the size of the municipal employment (demand labor). In this paper we present and estimate a theoretical model that focuses on this double role of bureaucrats. The predictions from the theoretical model are supported by our empirical results: The estimates based on data from Swedish municipalities 1990–2002, show that wages have smaller effects on the demand for bureaucrats than on the demand for other types of public employees. Actually wages have no significant effect on the number of bureaucrats the municipality employs.

Suggested Citation

  • Dahlberg, Matz & Mörk, Eva, 2004. "Public employment and the double role of bureaucrats," Working Paper Series 2004:11, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2004_011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifau.se/upload/pdf/se/2004/wp04-11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary Miller, 1977. "Bureaucratic compliance as a game on the unit square," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 37-51, March.
    2. Thomas Romer & Howard Rosenthal, 1978. "Political resource allocation, controlled agendas, and the status quo," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 27-43, December.
    3. Courant, Paul N & Gramlich, Edward M & Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1979. "Public Employee Market Power and the Level of Government Spending," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(5), pages 806-817, December.
    4. Dahlberg, Matz & Lindstrom, Tomas, 1998. "Are Local Governments Governed by Forward Looking Decision Makers?: An Investigation of Spending Patterns in Swedish Municipalities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 254-271, September.
    5. Bailey, Stephen J & Connolly, Stephen, 1998. "The Flypaper Effect: Identifying Areas for Further Research," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 95(3-4), pages 335-361, June.
    6. Dixit, Avinash K & Londregan, John, 1994. "The Determinants of Success of Special Interests in Redistributive Politics," CEPR Discussion Papers 1054, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Jorid Kalseth & Jørn Rattsø, 1998. "Political Control of Administrative Spending: The Case of Local Governments in Norway," Chapters, in: Jørn Rattsø (ed.), Fiscal Federalism and State–local Finance, chapter 11, pages 181-201, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Bergstrom, Pal & Dahlberg, Matz & Mork, Eva, 2004. "The effects of grants and wages on municipal labour demand," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 315-334, June.
    9. Romer, Thomas & Rosenthal, Howard, 1982. "Median Voters or Budget Maximizers: Evidence from School Expenditure Referenda," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 20(4), pages 556-578, October.
    10. Matz Dahlberg & Eva Johansson, 2000. "An examination of the dynamic behaviour of local governments using GMM bootstrapping methods," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(4), pages 401-416.
    11. Breton, Albert & Wintrobe, Ronald, 1975. "The Equilibrium Size of a Budget-maximizing Bureau: A Note on Niskanen's Theory of Bureaucracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 83(1), pages 195-207, February.
    12. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    13. 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.
    14. Matz Dahlberg & Eva Johansson, 1998. "The revenues-expenditures nexus: panel data evidence from Swedish municipalities," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(10), pages 1379-1386.
    15. Thomas Romer & Howard Rosenthal, 1979. "Bureaucrats Versus Voters: On the Political Economy of Resource Allocation by Direct Democracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(4), pages 563-587.
    16. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Chen, Jie, 2006. "The Dynamics of Housing Allowance Claims in Sweden: A discrete-time hazard analysis," Working Paper Series 2006:1, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    2. Martin Söderström & Roope Uusitalo, 2010. "School Choice and Segregation: Evidence from an Admission Reform," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 112(1), pages 55-76, March.
    3. Berg, Lennart & Berger, Tommy, 2005. "The Q theory and the Swedish housing market –an empirical test," Working Paper Series 2005:19, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    4. van den Berg, Gerard J & Lindeboom, Maarten & Dolton, Peter J, 2004. "Survey non-response and unemployment duration," Working Paper Series 2004:12, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    5. Dahlberg, Matz & Lundqvist, Heléne & Mörk, Eva, 2008. "Intergovernmental grants and bureaucratic power," Working Paper Series 2008:17, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    6. Ahlin, Åsa & Mörk, Eva, 2008. "Effects of decentralization on school resources," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 276-284, June.
    7. Svaleryd, Helena & Vlachos, Jonas, 2009. "Political rents in a non-corrupt democracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(3-4), pages 355-372, April.
    8. Fredrik Johansson-Tormod & Anders Klevmarken, 2022. "Explaining the Size and Nature of Response in a Survey on Health Status and Economic Standard," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 15(1), pages 63-77.
    9. John Gibson, 2007. "The Public Sector Pay Premium and Compensating Differentials in the New Zealand Labour Market," Working Papers in Economics 07/20, University of Waikato.

    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. Dahlberg, Matz & Mörk, Eva & Rattsø, Jørn & Ågren, Hanna, 2008. "Using a discontinuous grant rule to identify the effect of grants on local taxes and spending," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(12), pages 2320-2335, December.
    2. Bergstrom, Pal & Dahlberg, Matz & Mork, Eva, 2004. "The effects of grants and wages on municipal labour demand," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 315-334, June.
    3. Dahlberg, M. & Jacob, J., 2000. "Sluggishness, Endogeneity and the Demand for Local Public Services," Papers 2000-17, Uppsala - Working Paper Series.
    4. Moisio, Antti, 2002. "Essays on Finnish Municipal Finance and Intergovernmental Grants," Research Reports 93, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Dahlberg, Matz & Lundqvist, Heléne & Mörk, Eva, 2008. "Intergovernmental grants and bureaucratic power," Working Paper Series 2008:17, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    6. Bergström, Pål & Dahlberg, Matz & Johansson, Eva, 1998. "Municipal labour demand," Working Paper Series 1998:1, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    7. Bergstrom, P. & Dahlberg, M. & Johansson, E., 1998. "Municipal Labour Demand. Sweden 1988-1995," Papers 1998:24, Uppsala - Working Paper Series.
    8. Antti Moisio, 2001. "On Local Government Spending and Taxation Behaviour - Effect of population size and economic condition," ERSA conference papers ersa01p170, European Regional Science Association.
    9. Antti Moisio, 2001. "On Local Government Spending and Taxation Behaviour - effect of population size and economic condition," Discussion Papers 257, Government Institute for Economic Research Finland (VATT).
    10. Benoît Le Maux, 2009. "Governmental behavior in representative democracy: a synthesis of the theoretical literature," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 447-465, December.
    11. Miltos Makris, 2003. "Administrative Bureaus with Standard Operating Procedures," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 03/062, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    12. Jaaidane, Touria & Larribeau, Sophie & Leprince, Matthieu, 2020. "The Determinants of French Municipal Labor Demand," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 2003, CEPREMAP.
    13. Stephen Coate & Yanlei Ma, 2017. "Evaluating The Social Optimality Of Durable Public Good Provision Using The Housing Price Response To Public Investment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(1), pages 3-31, February.
    14. Albert Solé-Ollé & Pilar Sorribas-Navarro, 2009. "The dynamic adjustment of local government budgets: does Spain behave differently?," Working Papers 2009/7, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    15. Randall Holcombe, 1989. "The median voter model in public choice theory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 115-125, May.
    16. Miriam Hortas-Rico, 2014. "Urban sprawl and municipal budgets in Spain: A dynamic panel data analysis," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(4), pages 843-864, November.
    17. Albert Sol魏ll頍 & Pilar Sorribas-Navarro, 2012. "The dynamic adjustment of local government budgets: does Spain behave differently?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(25), pages 3203-3213, September.
    18. Barseghyan, Levon & Coate, Stephen, 2014. "Bureaucrats, voters, and public investment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 35-48.
    19. Bruno S. Frey & Lasse Steiner, 2012. "Political Economy: Success or Failure?," Contemporary Economics, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw., vol. 6(3), September.
    20. Yihua Yu & Jing Wang & Xi Tian, 2016. "Identifying the Flypaper Effect in the Presence of Spatial Dependence: Evidence from Education in China's Counties," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 93-110, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public employment; bureaucrats;

    JEL classification:

    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:hhs:ifauwp:2004_011. 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: Ali Ghooloo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifagvse.html .

    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.