Where Does the Good Shepherd Go? Civic Virtue and Sorting into Public Sector Employment

Adam Ayaita, Filiz Guelal () and Philip Yang ()

No 134, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: Several studies have analyzed motives to work in the public versus private sector. However, research on prosocial motivation in the context of public sector employment has largely neglected civic virtue, the motive to contribute to society. This study considers civic virtue in addition to other possible motives, using a representative, longitudinal data set of employees in Germany including 63,203 observations of 13,685 different individuals. We find that civic virtue relates positively to public sector employment beyond altruism, risk aversion, and laziness. The result holds within different branches and is explained by selection at the start of the career.

Keywords: Civic virtue; engagement; prosocial motivation; public sector employment; selection; socialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H1 J45 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2017-07, Revised 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/leadinghouse/0134_lhwpaper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Where Does the Good Shepherd Go? Civic Virtue and Sorting into Public Sector Employment (2019)
Journal Article: Where Does the Good Shepherd Go? Civic Virtue and Sorting into Public Sector Employment (2019)
Working Paper: Where Does the Good Shepherd Go? Civic Virtue and Sorting into Public Sector Employment (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0134

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