IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocawp/01-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Employment Effects of Restructuring in the Public Sector in North America

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Fenton
  • Irene Ip
  • Geoff Wright

Abstract

This paper examines whether restructuring in the public sector contributed to the slower cyclical recovery in Canada than in the United States during the 1990s. Changes in public sector employment are used to investigate this question. The pressures that led up to the restructuring are explored and the resulting changes in employment are documented. A standardized definition of the public sector is proposed that allows for a consistent comparison of changes in employment in Canada with those of the United States. These changes are examined by level of government and by function. The analysis reveals that, in Canada, changes in employment in the "standardized" public sector were negative during much of the 1990s, in contrast to the continued, steady expansion of this sector in the United States. Evidence presented from longitudinal surveys indicates that certain workers who were displaced from the public sector in Canada experienced difficulties regaining employment. A key conclusion is that public sector restructuring contributed to the slower recovery in employment in Canada in the 1990s.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Fenton & Irene Ip & Geoff Wright, 2001. "Employment Effects of Restructuring in the Public Sector in North America," Staff Working Papers 01-19, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:01-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wp01-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Atkinson & Paul van den Noord, 2001. "Managing Public Expenditure: Some Emerging Policy Issues and A Framework for Analysis," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 285, OECD Publishing.
    2. Marriott, J.F. & Mable, A.L., 1994. "The Hospital sector: reform Initiatives," Papers 94-13, Queen's at Kingston - School of Policy Studies.
    3. Hartle, D.G., 1993. "The Federal Deficit," Papers 93-30, Queen's at Kingston - School of Policy Studies.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jean Farès & Terence Yuen, 2003. "Technological Change and the Education Premium in Canada: Sectoral Evidence," Staff Working Papers 03-18, Bank of Canada.
    2. Carolyn Kwan, 2002. "Restructuring in the Canadian Economy: A Survey of Firms," Staff Working Papers 02-8, Bank of Canada.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Groemling, 2002. "Why does redistribution not shrink when equality is high?," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 37(4), pages 204-211, July.
    2. Alessandro Giosi & Silvia Testarmata & Sandro Brunelli & Bianca Staglianò, 2012. "Does the Quality of Public Finance Enhance Fiscal Discipline in the European Union? A Cross-Country Analysis," DSI Essays Series, DSI - Dipartimento di Studi sull'Impresa, vol. 21.
    3. Itay Ringel & Asher Tishler, 2011. "The Government Budget Allocation Process and National Security: An Application to the Israeli–Syrian Arms Race," Chapters, in: Derek L. Braddon & Keith Hartley (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Conflict, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Stefano Paternostro & Anand Rajaram & Erwin R. Tiongson, 2007. "How Does the Composition of Public Spending Matter?," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 47-82.
    5. Paul van den Noord & Chistopher Heady, 2001. "Surveillance of Tax Policies: A Synthesis of Findings in Economic Surveys," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 303, OECD Publishing.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labour markets;

    JEL classification:

    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:01-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bocgvca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.