Public Sector Pay And Employment Reform

Overstaffed bureaucracies afflicted by eroding salaries, demoralization, corruption, moonlighting, and chronic absenteeism are often unable to carry out the key tasks of economic recovery. What should the Bank do about it?

This supplement presents country case studies reviewing country experiences with managing wage bill pressures, which are the basis for the compensation and employment reform lessons identified in the main paper. The selection of countries for the case studies reflects past studies carried out by either the IMF or the World Bank in the context of technical assistance or bilateral surveillance (Table 1). These studies provide important insights into the different sources of wage bill pressures as well as the reform challenges governments have faced when addressing these pressures over the short and medium term. The studies cover 20 countries, including five advanced economies, six countries from sub-Saharan Africa, two countries in developing Asia, one country in the Middle East and North Africa, three countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and three countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS. The structure of each case study is similar, with each study starting with a presentation of the institutional coverage and framework for setting and managing the wage bill; a description of employment and compensation levels, including their comparison with the private sector; and a discussion of the challenges that motivated the need for reforms and, when applicable, the reforms implemented and lessons derived from these.

Government compensation and employment policies are important for the efficient delivery of public services which are crucial for the functioning of economies and the general prosperity of societies. On average, spending on the wage bill absorbs around one-fifth of total spending. Cross-country variation in wage spending reflects, in part, national choices about the government’s role in priority sectors, as well as variations in the level of economic development and resource constraints.

Analyzes the issues affecting income security for the elderly in both developing and industrial nations. Systems providing financial security for the old are under increasing strain throughout the world. Changing demographics have led to an increased proportion of old people in the general population. Traditional means of support for the old, such as extended families, are weakening. Meanwhile, formal systems, such as government-backed pensions, have proven unstable. For these reasons economists, policymakers, and government officials are exploring ways to address such issues as: *How to ensure financial security for the old and the best ways of paying for such security *The roles of the public and private sectors when systems are used to enhance rather than detract from economic growth. This study, the first comprehensive and global examination of old age security, addresses such issues. It identifies three functions of old age financial security programs--redistribution, saving, and insurance. It evaluates the policy options for meeting these functions using two criteria: their impact on the aged and their impact on the economy as a whole. The study suggests that financial security for the old and economic growth would be better served if governments relied on three systems: 1) A publicly managed system with mandatory participation and the limited goal of reducing poverty among the old 2) A privately managed mandatory savings system 3) A voluntary savings system. These three systems would ensure against the many risks of old age. The study concludes that a combination of different income security policies is more effective than any single approach and that all countries should begin planning for their aging populations now. A Copublication of the World Bank and Oxford University Press.

This report assesses the impact of pay reforms on pay dispersion in the public service. To do so, it draws on recent experiences in Australia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

This paper compiles and compares recent and past measures introduced to contain the public wage bill in a number of emerging and advanced economies to assess their effectiveness in bringing down expenditure in a sustained way. In the aftermath of the Great Recession a number of countries have approved measures on the wage bill as part of fiscal consolidation efforts. These recent episodes are compared to past cases implemented in advanced economies over the period 1979–2009. Findings suggest that public wage bill consolidation episodes pre and post 2009 are similar in many respects. Moreover, typically countries that were able to achieve more sustained reductions in the wage bill have implemented to larger extent structural measures, and/or these measures were accompanied with substantial social dialogue and consensus.

We study the determinants of employment and wages in the public sector, using a new set of panel data for 34 LDCs and 21 OECD countries from 1972–992, by estimating equations suggested by an efficiency wage model. We find that government employment is positively associated with the relaxation of resource constraints (the revenue-to-GDP ratio and foreign financing in the case of developing countries and GDP per capita in the case of OECD countries), urbanization, the level of education, and certain countercyclical pressures for government hiring (the real effective exchange rate for developing countries and private employment for OECD countries). Certain measures of government wages are positively associated with government revenues and negatively associated with the level of education, government debt, and countercyclical pressures.