The impact of public employment: evidence from Bonn

Sascha Becker, Stephan Heblich and Daniel M. Sturm

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper evaluates the impact of changes in public employment on private sector activity using the creation of the new West German government in Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous variation. To guide our empirical analysis, we develop a simple economic geography model in which public sector employment affects private sector employment through its impact on wages and house prices and also through potential productivity and amenity spillovers to the private sector. We find that relative to a control group of cities, Bonn experiences a substantial increase in public employment. However, this results in only modest increases in private sector employment with each additional public sector job destroying around 0.2 jobs in industry and creating just over one additional job in other parts of the private sector. We show how our model can explain this finding and provide several pieces of evidence for the mechanisms emphasized by the model.

Keywords: Economic geography; German division; Place-Based policies; Public employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 J45 N44 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Published in Journal of Urban Economics, 1, March, 2021, 122. ISSN: 0094-1190

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/108867/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of public employment: Evidence from Bonn (2021)
Working Paper: The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn (2018)
Working Paper: The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn (2018)
Working Paper: The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn (2018)
Working Paper: The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn (2018)
Working Paper: The impact of public employment: evidence from Bonn (2018)
Working Paper: The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn (2018)
Working Paper: The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn (2018)
Working Paper: The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn (2017)
Working Paper: The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:108867

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