IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6141.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What Drives Public Employment?

Author

Listed:
  • Dani Rodrik

Abstract

Excessive levels of government employment is one of the most frequent complaints made about public-sector governance in developing economies. The explanation typically offered is that governments have used public-sector employment as a tool for generating and redistributing rents. This paper suggests an alternative hypothesis for government employment practices: relatively safe government jobs represent partial insurance against undiversifiable external risk faced by the domestic economy. By providing a larger number of secure' jobs in the public sector, a government can counteract the income and consumption risk faced by the households in the economy. I show that countries that are greatly exposed to external risk have higher levels of government employment and have experienced faster rates of growth of government consumption. The basic finding on the (partial) correlation between government employment and exposure to external risk is robust against the alternative hypothesis that government employment has been driven by considerations of rent-seeking and rent distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Dani Rodrik, 1997. "What Drives Public Employment?," NBER Working Papers 6141, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6141
    Note: ITI PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6141.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bourguignon, F. & Lambert, S. & Suwa-Eisenmann, A., 1996. "Distribution of Export Price Risk in a Developing Country," DELTA Working Papers 96-11, DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure).
    2. Rama,Martin G., 1997. "Efficient public sector downsizing," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1840, The World Bank.
    3. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Why Do More Open Economies Have Bigger Governments?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(5), pages 997-1032, October.
    4. Jeffrey A. Frankel & David Romer, 1996. "Trade and Growth: An Empirical Investigation," NBER Working Papers 5476, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Constantine, Collin, 2014. "Rethinking the Twin Deficits," MPRA Paper 58798, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Doğan, İbrahim & Bilgili, Faik, 2014. "The non-linear impact of high and growing government external debt on economic growth: A Markov Regime-switching approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 213-220.
    3. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    4. Alberto Chong & Virgilio Galdo & Máximo Torero, 2005. "Does Privatization Deliver? Access to Telephone Services and Household Income in Poor Rural Areas Using a Quasi-Natural Experiment in Peru," Research Department Publications 4417, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    5. J. Clark & Robert Lawson & Alex Nowrasteh & Benjamin Powell & Ryan Murphy, 2015. "Does immigration impact institutions?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 163(3), pages 321-335, June.
    6. Dani Rodrik, 2018. "Populism and the economics of globalization," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 1(1), pages 12-33, June.
    7. Jian-Guang Shen, 2002. "Democracy and growth: An alternative empirical approach," Development and Comp Systems 0212002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Andres, Javier & Domenech, Rafael & Fatas, Antonio, 2008. "The stabilizing role of government size," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 571-593, February.
    9. Eduardo A. Cavallo, 2008. "Output Volatility and Openness to Trade: a Reassessment," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2008), pages 105-152, September.
    10. Bruno Amable & Donatella Gatti & Jan Schumacher, 2006. "Welfare-State Retrenchment: The Partisan Effect Revisited," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 22(3), pages 426-444, Autumn.
    11. Elhanan Helpman & Marc Melitz & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Estimating Trade Flows: Trading Partners and Trading Volumes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 441-487.
    12. Hibbs, Douglas A, Jr, 2000. "Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 104(1-2), pages 149-180, July.
    13. Noland, Marcus, 1997. "Has Asian export performance been unique?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1-2), pages 79-101, August.
    14. Eloi Laurent & Jacques Le Cacheux, 2006. "Integrity and Efficiency in the EU: The Case against the European economic constitution," Working Papers hal-00972707, HAL.
    15. Theo S. Eicher & Andreas Leukert, 2009. "Institutions and Economic Performance: Endogeneity and Parameter Heterogeneity," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(1), pages 197-219, February.
    16. Durlauf, Steven N., 2001. "Manifesto for a growth econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 65-69, January.
    17. Kuralbayeva, Karlygash, 2013. "Optimal fiscal policy and different degrees of access to international capital markets," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 336-352.
    18. Daniel Koshiyama & Denilson Alencastro & Adelar Fochezatto, 2007. "International Trade and Economic Growth in Latin America: a Granger Causality Analysis with Panel Data," EcoMod2007 23900046, EcoMod.
    19. Maryam Almasifard & Sasan Torabzadeh Khorasani, 2017. "Relationship Between Domestic Production in Agricultural and Industrial Sectors and Purchasing Power by Controlling for International Trade Variables (Iran)," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(4), pages 244-253.
    20. World Bank, 2005. "Dominica : OECS Fiscal Issues, Policies to Achieve Fiscal Sustainability and Improve Efficiency and Equity of Public Expenditures," World Bank Publications - Reports 8681, The World Bank Group.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • F40 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - General

    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:nbr:nberwo:6141. 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/nberrus.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.