public sector wages and bureaucratic quality evidence from latin america the purpose of this paper is to present evidence on public private wage differential for a sample of latin american countries and to discuss the relationship between public private wage differentials and bureaucratic quality in the region the paper starts by estimating public private wage differentials for a sample of 17 latin american countries covering 88 percent of the population of the region next the paper looks at the relationship between bureaucratic quality and public private wage differentials and finds that while there is no correlation between average public sector wages and bureaucratic quality there is a positive correlation between bureaucratic quality and the degree

an extension of the second welfare theorem to economies with nonconvexities and public goods in this paper we report a generalization of the results of foley and guesnerie on the second welfare theorem to economies with arbitrary nonconvex production sets the nature of marginal cost prices in such economies is clarified through the use of the clarke tangent cones

financial intermediation and endogenous growth an endogenous growth model with multiple assets is developed agents who face random future liquidity needs accumulate capital and a liquid but unproductive asset the effects of introducing financial intermediation into this environment are considered conditions are provided under which the introduction of intermediaries shifts the composition of savings toward capital causing intermediation to be growth promoting in addition intermediaries generally reduce socially unnecessary capital liquidation again tending to promote growth

a switching regression model for wage determinants in the public and private sectors of a developing country governments in less developed countries face severe budgetary constraints given that public sector employment is a large part of modern sector employment the government wage bill h as come under increased scrutiny the central question is how do gove rnment wages compare with those in the private sector in this paper the authors develop and estimate a model to answer this question an important aspect of this model is the endogenous treatment of sector choice the estimation results full information maximum likelihood sound a strong warning against the use of ordinary least squares est imates that are based on sector specific samples data are from the i vory coast copyright 1988 by mit press

existence of marginal cost pricing equilibria in economies with several nonconvex firms this paper considers a general equilibrium model of an economy where some firms may exhibit increasing returns to scale or more general types of nonconvexities the firms are instructed to follow the standard marginal cost pricing rule or to fulfill the first order necessary conditions for profit maximization a general existence theorem of equilibria is proved in the case of an arbitrary number of firms no assumption is made to imply the aggregate productive efficiency of equilibria a condition that must be excluded in the nonconvex case the failure of the competitive mechanism in the presence of increasing returns to scale has been recognized since marshall 1920 and the search for alternative mechanisms has resulted in the so called theory of marginal cost pricing this theory was developed by allais 1953 hotelling 1938 lange 1936 lerner 1936 pigou 1932 to remain in the thirties and forties but has a long history dating back to the discussion on public utility pricing by dupuit 1844 it states that an optimum of welfare corresponds to the sale of everything at marginal cost hotelling 1938 this statement of the second welfare theorem has since been formulated at a high level of generality starting with the work by guesnerie 1975 and more recently by bonnisseau and cornet 1988b cornet 1986 1988a b c khan and vohra 1987 1988 quinzii 1986 none of these papers however is concerned with the existence of equilibria this has been considered in the past ten years by beato 1979 1982 beato and mas colell 1985 brown and heal 1982 brown et al 1986 cornet 1982 dierker guesnerie and neuefeind 1985 mantel 1979 and more recently by bonnisseau bonnisseau cornet kamiya and vohra in the special issue of the journal of mathematical economics 1988 on general equilibrium theory and increasing returns the purpose of this paper is to provide a general existence theorem for an economy with an arbitrary number of convex and nonconvex producers which may exhibit increasing returns to scale or even more general types of nonconvexities in our model a the consumers maximize their preferences subject to their budget constraints b the convex producers maximize their profits while the nonconvex producers are instructed to follow the marginal pricing rule i e they

comparing earnings profiles in urban areas of an ldc rural to urban migrants vs native workers abstract we use tanzanian data to test a recently proposed hypothesis that rural to urban migrants have an incentive to supply greater work effort than native urban workers because of the migrants positive probability of returning to the low wage rural areas we treat the choice between public and private sector employment as endogenous and for theoretical and empirical reasons distinguish migrants with access to rural land from those without access our results show that migrants in both sectors face lower initial wage offers than native urban workers but the wage gap is eliminated within a decade or less and thereafter migrants surpass the wage offers of native workers

what has 20 years of public private pay gap literature told us eastern european transitioning vs developed economies this paper surveys the literature on public private sector pay differentials based on 20 years of research in transitioning countries of eastern europe ee and compares the results with estimates obtained from developed market economies the majority of empirical studies from ee economies found evidence of public sector pay penalties during the period of economic transition from a communist to market based economy in developed economies however the average differential is usually around zero or positive the public sector pay inequality reducing effect relative to the private sector is greater in transitioning economies than in developed economies nevertheless there is evidence that the sign of the public sector pay gap as well as the relative public sector pay distribution change with the progress of economic transition towards those usually observed in developed economies different pay setting arrangements between private and public sectors and competition for workers seem to be major arguments for the existence of systematic pay differences between the two sectors

financial development by learning abstract this paper analyzes financial development driven by accumulation of information through learning by doing financial intermediaries discover good investment opportunities by making loans to industrial projects they thereby accumulate information that improves the allocation of savings an initial equilibrium with poor information and thus no industrial investment may trap the economy in financial underdevelopment such a trap is informational and can be overcome by the remedies that resolve informational externality

the demand for labor market structure an economic approach this paper formulates and estimates a model for the determination of employer and union demand for multiemployer vs single employer bargaining units utility maximizing risk averse firms and unions are both assumed to weigh the impact of each type of bargaining unit on the expected level and variability of profits and wages respectively the model is tested on a 1975 sample of 3 486 individual collective bargaining agreements because either party can generally leave a multiemployer unit without the other party s consent a partially observed bivariate probit model is used to estimate demand for structure it is found that the forgone profits due to a multiemployer unit relative to a single firm unit lower firm demands for this type of unit while forgone wages in a multiemployer unit relative to a single firm unit lower union demand for this type of unit

examining equality between public and private sector wage distributions i introduction institutional political and economic factors all contribute to the determination of public sector wages for example the public sector is almost the only place in many advanced economies where unions continue to have a significant presence and an influential voice in setting wages and conditions of work political factors such as desiring to be a good employer may also influence the public sector wage structure as a good employer governments may offer low skilled workers higher rates of pay than they might get in the private sector on the other hand the public sector may be adverse to paying very skilled workers high rates of pay if the public does not like to see public sector workers earning too much economic factors such as spending and tax receipt limits can also affect the wage structure in the public sector all of these factors could make the public sector labor market be less efficient than that of the private sector from an economic perspective if government workers are paid more than private sector workers ceteris paribus then taxes are being wasted if private sector workers are paid more than government workers governments cannot recruit and retain appropriately skilled and productive workers to make the wage structures comparable many countries use surveys to ascertain the prevailing earnings levels for jobs in the private sector that are similar to public sector jobs however as fogel and lewin 1974 and gregory 1990 point out these survey methods are fraught with biases that may affect comparability of wages indeed there is little empirical evidence that wages between the two sectors are equal bender 1998 and gregory and borland 1999 survey the current literature on public private wage differentials and report that most studies find that central governments pay more on average compared to the private sector even after controlling for differences in the productive characteristics of workers furthermore as elliott et al 1999 find comparability in pay is currently important in the debates over public sector pay reform particularly in europe the institutional and political factors outlined above are waning in importance and economic considerations are seemingly coming to the fore because of perceptions of the overpayment of public sector workers and the desire to cut government wage bills politicians in these countries are devising policies to align average rates of pay by slowing the relative rate of public sector wage growth the policies should be different however if wage distributions are not the same indeed there is some evidence that the distributions differ as found in the double imbalance concept articulated by schager 1993 katz and krueger 1993 and elliott and duffus 1996 this imbalance is characterized by public sector workers at the lower end of the occupational hierarchy receiving the largest wage premia and workers at the upper end earning less than their private sector counterparts if the distributions are incomparable ceteris paribus mandating equal average rates of pay growth will not ensure comparability policies aimed at realigning wage structures at the ends of the distribution should then be followed to promote comparability this article compares public and private sector wage distributions and examines the extent to which focusing exclusively on differences in mean wages obscures the true nature of the wage relativities data from the british social change and economic life initiative sceli are employed to investigate comparability this data set is well suited for a comparability study given the range of personal and job characteristics that control for differences in public and private sector jobs moreover the data were collected in 1986 before substantial reform of public sector pay in the united kingdom reviewed in bender and elliott 1999 this offers a test to see if the reform policies were appropriate to promote wage comparability

union wage differentials in the public and private sectors a simultaneous equations specification the paper attempts to integrate new approaches to estimating union wage effects with the analysis of public private sector wage differentials estimates of the union differential in both public and private sectors allowing for the endogeneity of union status are presented the hypothesis that the recently measured rents to public sector employment primarily reflect the recent increase in unionization in that sector is examined and receives considerable empirical support there was evidence of positive selection into the union sector especially for private sector workers union status appears to be strongly influenced by the expected wage gain from joining the union sector

the effects of public sector hiring and compensation policies on the egyptian labor market this article examines the combined impact of the employment guarantee for graduates and public sector compensation policies on the egyptian labor market besides contributing to an unsustainable rate of growth in the government labor force these policies have encouraged queuing for government jobs contributed to high graduate unemployment rates and reduced the employment of graduates in the private sector despite substantial wage erosion in the public sector in recent years government wages when appropriately corrected for observed heterogeneity and sample selection are on a par with or higher than private sector wages especially for graduates when combined with the more desirable nonwage aspects of government jobs these compensation levels explain the attractiveness of public sector employment to graduates government pay scales are especially advantageous to female secondary school graduates who appear to face considerable discrimination in the private sector

existence of lindahl equilibria in economies with nonconvex production sets abstract in this article we establish the existence of lindahl equilibria in an economy with public goods which may exhibit increasing returns to scale or more general types of nonconvexities in the production sector this result generalizes several previous results in the literature we give a simple proof by using an auxiliary economy with an enlarged space of goods

a switching regression model of public private sector wage differentials in peru 1985 86 this article examines the combined impact of the employment guarantee for graduates and public sector compensation policies on the egyptian labor market besides contributing to an unsustainable rate of growth in the government labor force these

central government versus private sector wages and cognitive skills evidence using endogenous switching regression the importance of estimation techniques that allow for nonrandom selection of workers into the public and private sectors has been established in the theoretical and empirical literature a separate body of work has explored the contribution of cognitive and other basic skills to earnings this article brings together these two strands of empirical literature using adult literacy and lifeskills all survey data for norway and bermuda in the case of norway results from both ordinary least squares ols and a switching regression model agree that cognitive skills are rewarded more in the public sector and that in both sectors the main effect is the direct effect of skills on earnings in the case of bermuda however switching regression estimates are substantially different with respect to the how skills affect earnings furthermore controlling for cognitive skills changes the nature of selection and hence the estimates of sector wage differentials

public and private sector wages of male workers in germany we analyze several statistical assumptions used in empirical models on public private sector wage structures based on data for germany which contain a large range of background variables usually not available in other studies we investigate the sensitivity of results to various specification and identification assumptions the standard switching regression model is extended to allow for endogeneity of education level experience and hours worked these extensions lead to considerably different parameter estimates we compare conditional and unconditional wage differentials between the public and the private sector for the various specifications these differentials are sensitive to identification assumptions but robust across specifications which do and do not allow for endogeneity of education experience and hours worked

on the existence of lindahl hotelling equilibria abstract we consider an economy characterized by the simultaneous presence of public goods and many increasing returns to scale firms we formalize a notion of equilibrium termed a lindahl hotelling equilibrium in which producer prices are marginal cost prices and the public goods are financed through lindahl prices sufficient conditions are provided for such an equilibrium to exist

an analysis of public and private sector wages allowing for endogenous choices of both government and union status a general selection model is estimated in which workers select across four labor markets private nonunion private union public nonunion and public union evidence is found of positive selection bias in the private nonunion sector and of negative selection bias in the public union sector union wage differentials in the public and private sectors as well as public private wage differentials are then calculated two different types of wage differentials are contrasted we discuss when it is appropriate to use each type of differential

data watch the world bank s living standards measurement study household surveys since 1985 the world bank has been collecting household survey data in developing countries that provide a rich source of information for assessing household welfare understanding household behavior and evaluating the impact of government policies this article describes these household surveys known as living standards measurement study lsms surveys and explains how to obtain their data lsms surveys have been implemented in over twenty developing countries and have been used to analyze poverty labor markets health and education pricing policies determinants of school performance savings and consumption smoothing health and nutrition policies and gender and fertility issues

existence of marginal cost pricing equilibria the nonsmooth case in this article we report a general existence theorem of a marginal cost pricing equilibrium for an economy which may exhibit increasing returns to scale or more general types of nonconvexities in the production sector our model considers an arbitrary number of firms and no smoothness assumption is made on their production sets or on the aggregate production set in this article we report a general existence theorem of marginal cost pricing equilibria for an economy which may exhibit increasing returns to scale or more general types of nonconvexities in the production sector in our model which considers a positive finite numbers 1 of commodities m of consumers and n of firms a consumers maximize their preferences subject to their budget constraints b convex producers maximize profits while nonconvex producers are instructed to follow the marginal pricing rule i e they fulfill the first order necessary condition for profit maximization in a precise mathematical sense formalized with clarke s normal cone our treatment of convex and nonconvex producers will in fact be symmetric the technological possibilities of the jth producer j 1 n

the central government private sector wage differential since ehrenberg and schwarz 1986 there has been a plethora of articles investigating the relationship between public and private sector wages this article examines part of this post 1986 literature by reviewing articles that examine central government private sector wage differentials in sum most articles find that there is a premium paid to central government workers although the premium has declined in recent years in developing countries however the differential is usually negative women and minorities tend to do better in the public sector relative to their private sector counterparts the evidence on union premiums between sectors is mixed although the premium tends to be higher in the private sector however public sector union workers do not do much better than private sector union members the magnitude of all of the wage differentials discussed are sensitive to the estimation technique and data source used the most common explanation for the public sector wage premium is economic rent accruing to government workers although the public sector wage determination literature suggests that the differential is due to returns to political and vote producing activities not relevant in the private sector