The authors use 1993-94 and 1999-2000 India Employment and Unemployment surveys to investigate wage differentials between the public and private sectors as well as workers' decisions to join a particular sector. To obtain robust estimates of the wage differential, they apply three econometric techniques each relying on a different set of assumptions about the process of job selection. All three methods show that differences in wages between public sector workers and workers in the formal-private and informal-casual sectors are positive and high. Estimates show that, on average, the public sector premium ranges between 62 percent and 102 percent over the private-formal sector, and between 164 percent and 259 percent over the informal-casual sector, depending on the choice of methodology.

This is the thirty-fourth report on senior salaries with the remit of providing independent advice to the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Defence and the Secretary of State for Health on the remuneration of holders of judicial office; senior civil servants; senior officers of the armed forces; very senior managers in the NHS; and other such public appointments. However it covers the second year of the Government's pay freeze for public sector workers paid over £21,000 a year. Therefore, no recommendations for the relevant remit groups could be made. The Review Body report concentrates accordingly on any evidence about recruitment, retention or motiviation, and sets out its views on changes it would like to see in the pay and performance management systems for the remit groups, systems which are nearly all currently under review.

This report is a response to the Government's request to consider whether pay for very senior managers in the NHS in England should be made more market-facing at local level. The review was complicated by the fact the NHS is currently undergoing reorganisation. The conclusions must therefore be subject to the caveat that better information is needed, Three recommendations however are put forward: that no additional locality pay measures be added to the new NHS very senior managers' pay framework; that the Department of Health collect and provide information on recruitment, retention and motivation of NHS very senior managers; and that all NHS very senior managers be assimilated into and paid according to the new pay framework, on the basis of job weight, once the current reforms have been fully implemented