The Regional Distribution of Public Employment: Theory and Evidence

Sebastian Kessing and Chiara Strozzi ()

Center for Economic Research (RECent) from University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi"

Abstract: We analyze the optimal regional pattern of public employment in an information constrained second-best redistribution policy showing that regionally differentiated public employment can serve as an expenditure side tagging device, bypassing or relaxing the equity-effciency trade-off. The optimal pattern exhibits higher levels of public employment in low productivity regions and is more pronounced the higher is the degree of regional inequality within the country. Empirically, using a panel of European regions from 1995-2007, we found evidence that public employment is systematically higher in low productivity regions. The latter effect is stronger in countries with higher levels of regional inequality.

Keywords: Public employment; redistribution; regional inequality; European regions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 J45 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: pages 25
Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://155.185.68.2/Recentpaper/recent-wp79.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The regional distribution of public employment: theory and evidence (2017)
Working Paper: The Regional Distribution of Public Employment:Theory and Evidence (2016)
Working Paper: The Regional Distribution of Public Employment: Theory and Evidence (2012)
Working Paper: The Regional Distribution of Public Employment: Theory and Evidence (2012)
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:mod:recent:079

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Center for Economic Research (RECent) from University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi" Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().