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来源类型 | Working Paper |
规范类型 | 报告 |
DOI | 10.3386/w18976 |
来源ID | Working Paper 18976 |
Shrouded Costs of Government: The Political Economy of State and Local Public Pensions | |
Edward L. Glaeser; Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto | |
发表日期 | 2013-04-18 |
出版年 | 2013 |
语种 | 英语 |
摘要 | Why are public-sector workers so heavily compensated with pensions and other non-pecuniary benefits? In this paper, we present a political economy model of shrouded compensation in which politicians compete for taxpayers' and public employees' votes by promising compensation packages, but some voters cannot evaluate every aspect of compensation. If pension packages are "shrouded," meaning that public-sector workers better understand their value than ordinary taxpayers, then compensation will be inefficiently back-loaded. In equilibrium, the welfare of public-sector workers could be improved, holding total public sector costs constant, if they received higher wages and lower pensions. Central control over dispersed municipal pensions has two offsetting effects on pension generosity: more state-level media attention helps taxpayers better understand pension costs, which reduces pension generosity; but a larger share of public sector workers will live within the jurisdiction, which increases pension generosity. We discuss pension arrangements in two decentralized states (California and Pennsylvania) and two centralized states (Massachusetts and Ohio) and find that in these cases, centralization appears to have modestly reduced pension arrangements; but, as the model suggests, this finding is unlikely to be universal. |
主题 | Public Economics ; National Fiscal Issues ; Subnational Fiscal Issues |
URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w18976 |
来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
引用统计 | |
资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/576650 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Edward L. Glaeser,Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto. Shrouded Costs of Government: The Political Economy of State and Local Public Pensions. 2013. |
条目包含的文件 | 条目无相关文件。 |
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