The Public Sector Pay Gap in France, Great Britain and Italy

22 Pages Posted: 18 Mar 2004

See all articles by Claudio Lucifora

Claudio Lucifora

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano ; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Dominique Meurs

University of Paris II Pantheon-Assas - ERMES

Date Written: March 2004

Abstract

We investigate public-private pay determination using French, British and Italian microdata. While traditional methods focus on parametric methods to estimate the public sector pay gap, in this paper, we use both non-parametric (kernel) and quantile regression methods to analyse the distribution of wages across sectors. We show that the public-private (hourly) wage differential is sensitive to the choice of quantile and that the pattern of premia varies with both gender and skill. In all countries the public sector is found to pay more low skilled workers with respect to the private sector, whilst the reverse is true for high skilled workers. The effects are more pronounced for females.

Keywords: wage differentials, public sector, quantile regression

JEL Classification: J31, J45, C14

Suggested Citation

Lucifora, Claudio and Meurs, Dominique, The Public Sector Pay Gap in France, Great Britain and Italy (March 2004). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=518523 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.518523

Claudio Lucifora (Contact Author)

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano ( email )

Department of Economics and Finance
Largo Gemelli, 1
20123 Milano
Italy
+39 027 234 2525 (Phone)
+39 027 234 2781 (Fax)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Dominique Meurs

University of Paris II Pantheon-Assas - ERMES ( email )

12 Place du Panthéon
Paris, Cedex 5, 75005
France

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