TY  - JOUR
AU  - Poterba,James M.
AU  - Rueben,Kim S.
TI  - Fiscal Institutions and Public Sector Labor Markets
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6659
PY  - 1998
Y2  - July 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6659
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6659.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James M. Poterba
Department of Economics
MIT, E52-350
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-6673
Fax: 617/258-7804
E-Mail: poterba@nber.org

Kim Rueben
Urban Institute
2100 M Street NW
Washington DC 20037
Tel: 202-261-5662
Fax: Senior Research Associate
E-Mail: krueben@ui.urban.org
AB  - This paper investigates how state and local fiscal institutions affect the pattern of relative wages between state and local government employees and their private sector counterparts.  It focuses  on changes in relative wages during the 1979-1986 period.  Empirical analysis of data from the Current Population Survey suggests that in places with limitations on local property taxes, and to a lesser extent state-level tax and expenditure caps, public sector wages grew more slowly than the wages paid to comparable workers in the private sector.  The differential movement of public sector and private sector wages is particularly pronounced for college-educated women who work in the local public sector.  Many of these employees are public school teachers.  There is some evidence that the impact of fiscal limits is most pronounced in the years immediately following their adoption, and that the effect of these limits weakens over time.
ER  -