Intrinsic Motivations of Public Sector Employees: Evidence for Germany

Robert Dur and Robin Zoutenbier

German Economic Review, 2015, vol. 16, issue 3, 343-366

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="geer12056-abs-0001">

We examine differences in altruism and laziness between public sector employees and private sector employees. Our theoretical model predicts that the likelihood of public sector employment increases with a worker's altruism, and increases or decreases with a worker's laziness depending on his altruism. Using questionnaire data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we find that public sector employees are significantly more altruistic and lazy than observationally equivalent private sector employees. A series of robustness checks show that these patterns are stronger among higher educated workers; that the sorting of altruistic people to the public sector takes place only within the caring industries; and that the difference in altruism is already present at the start of people's career, while the difference in laziness is only present for employees with sufficiently long work experience.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/geer.2015.16.issue-3 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: Intrinsic Motivations of Public Sector Employees: Evidence for Germany (2015)
Working Paper: Intrinsic Motivations of Public Sector Employees: Evidence for Germany (2014)
Working Paper: Intrinsic Motivations of Public Sector Employees: Evidence for Germany (2014)
Working Paper: Intrinsic Motivations of Public Sector Employees: Evidence for Germany (2013)
Working Paper: Intrinsic Motivations of Public Sector Employees: Evidence for Germany (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:germec:v:16:y:2015:i:3:p:343-366

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1465-6485

Access Statistics for this article

German Economic Review is currently edited by Bernhard Felderer, Joseph F. Francois, Ivo Welch, Urs Schweizer and David E. Wildasin

More articles in German Economic Review from Verein für Socialpolitik Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().