Do Left-Wing Governments Decrease Wage Inequality among Civil Servants? Empirical Evidence from the German States

Björn Kauder, Manuela Krause and Niklas Potrafke
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Manuela Kauder

No 8723, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We investigate whether left-wing governments decrease wage inequality among civil servants. The data is based on salaries of civil servants in the German states. Since a reform in 2006, German state governments are allowed to design salaries of civil servants. We employ encompassing data for pay levels and professions including judges, professors, policemen, and administrators and distinguish between levels of operating experiences. We use six wage inequality measures comparing salaries across pay levels and operating experiences. The results do not suggest that left-wing governments were more active in decreasing wage inequality among civil servants than center or right-wing governments. Cabinet members are civil servants themselves and decide on their own salaries: government ideology is also not shown to predict salaries of cabinet members. Because left-wing governments are perceived as taking action against income and wage inequality, future research should employ data from other federal states such as the United States to examine how government ideology influences salaries of civil servants.

Keywords: wage inequality; civil servants; government ideology; partisan politics; German states (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 D72 H70 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Do Left-wing Governments Decrease Wage Inequality among Civil Servants? Empirical Evidence from the German States (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8723

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