Public–private wage gap in Latin America (1992–2007): A matching approach

Using matching methods, we estimate the public–private wage gap for urban workers in eleven Latin American countries for the 1992–2007 period. These methods do not require any estimation of earnings equations and hence no validity-out-of-the-support assumptions; furthermore, this approach allows us to estimate not only the average wage gap but also its distribution. Our main findings indicate that the average public sector worker earns more than his/her private counterpart, and that this differential increased over the 1992–2007 period. Important differences along the wage distribution are also shown in the results; in fact, public servants in the highest percentiles of the wage distribution generally earn less than their private sector equivalents. Nonetheless, the percentile at which a positive wage gap becomes a wage penalty shifted over the period as the average wage gap experienced by most countries widened. Still, the most qualified public sector workers do face a wage penalty. Furthermore, indicators of government effectiveness show no relationship with the country ranking according to the public–private wage gap.     

WAGE DIFFERENTIALS AND OCCUPATIONAL WAGE PREMIA: FIRM-LEVEL EVIDENCE FOR BRAZIL AND CHILE

This paper examines wage differentials at the firm level in Chile and Brazil, using data for 1985 and 1991, and 1987 respectively. The high level of disaggregation in the data available for Chile enables us also to analyze the degree to which wage differentials between individual employers are similar across occupations.
The results of this study reaffirm those of previous research pointing to non-competitive explanations for wage differentials, specifically providing clear evidence that inter-firm wage premia are highly correlated across occupations.     

Socioeconomic status or noise? Tradeoffs in the generation of school quality information

This paper calculates a time series of simple, standard measures of schools' relative performance. These are drawn from a 1997–2004 panel of Chilean schools, using individual-level information on test scores and student characteristics for each year. The results suggest there is a stark tradeoff in the extent to which rankings generated using these measures: i) can be shown to be very similar to rankings based purely on students' socioeconomic status, and ii) are very volatile from year to year. At least in Chile, therefore, producing a meaningful ranking of schools that may inform parents and policymakers may be harder than is commonly assumed.