What Would the Average Public Sector Employee be Paid in the Private Sector?

Peter Matthew Siminski ()

Economics Working Papers from School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Abstract: This paper estimates the average Australian public sector wage premium. It includes a detailed critical review of the methods available to address this issue. The chosen approach is a quasi-differenced panel data model, estimated by the Generalised Method of Moments, which has many advantages over other methods and has not been used before for this topic. I find a positive average public sector wage premium for both sexes. The best estimates are 6.7% for men and 10.5% for women. The estimate is statistically significant for men (p = 0.024) and for women (p < 0.001). No evidence is found to suggest that the public sector has an equalising effect on the wages of its workers.

Keywords: public sector; wages; premium; panel data; GMM; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J45 J31 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Date: 2008

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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uow:depec1:wp08-05

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