Compilation of essays on public sector employment in the USA, in support of the expansion of public services to provide new employment opportunities for low income workers - covers urban area unemployment, historical perspectives on public works employment, underemployment, obstacles to public employment for minority group workers, public employment for rural workers, etc., and proposes employment policy alternatives. References and statistical tables.

This book applies the basic ideas and models of economics to develop a single transactions framework to explain the key institutional arrangements across the whole range of public sector organization: the regulatory commission, the executive tax-financed bureau, and the state-owned enterprise. This book also explores the link between agency form and administrative function, agency independence from the legislature, the rights extended to private interests to influence administrative decision making, the role of civil service arrangements that are so often seen as simply frustrating efficiency and responsiveness, and the boundary between public and private sectors. This book should be of value to those with a practical interest in public administration as well as students of political science, public administration, economics, and public policy.

This book uses a transactions cost approach to explain the key institutional characteristics across the public sector. It defines the distinctive governance, financing and employment arrangements that characterize the common forms of public sector organization: the regulatory commission, the executive tax-financed bureau and the state-owned enterprise. It suggests why these forms are used to perform different administrative functions, and why legislators often leave very important decisions to be resolved at the administrative level.

An estimated one out of five employees in this country works for some branch of government. Because policies concerning the compensation of these employees rest on assumptions about the economic dynamics of the public sector, the issue of public sector employment is of vital importance in the analysis of the national economy. In Public Sector Payrolls, leading economists explore the independent and interdependent functioning of the public and private sectors and their effect on the economy as a whole. The volume, developed from a 1984 National Bureau of Economic Research conference, focuses on various labor issues in military and other governmental employment. Several contributors discuss compensation in the armed forces and its relationship to that in the private sector, as well as the interaction between the military and the private sector in the employment of youth. This latter is of particular interest because studies of youth employment have generally ignored the important influence of military hiring practices on labor market conditions. In other contributions, the response of wages and employment in the public sector to economic conditions is analyzed, and a detailed study of government pension plans is presented. Also included is a theoretical and empirical analysis of comparable worth in the public sector from the viewpoint of analytical labor economics. The volume concludes with a look at public school teachers' salaries in the context of current debates over improving the quality of American education. A valuable resource to policymakers, Public Sector Payrolls will be an important addition to research in the field of labor economics.

When Congress enacted Social Secuirty in 1935, with the age of retirement set at age 65, average life expectancy was 62 years. By the time Medicare was enacted 30 years later, life expectancy had risen to age 70. Since the enactment of Medicare, life expectancy has risen to age 76 today and may be expected to increase further in the decades to come. Clearly, the increase in post-retirement life expectancy has significant implications for the level of national expenditures attributable to an aging population. One of the approaches suggested as a solution to the so-called income transfer problem is to redefine old age, that is, to push retirement and its associated benefits off to a later age. This would effectively increase the size of the workforce, with older workers continuing to contribute their payroll taxes for an extended period of time. The critical question Sicker poses is, will there be enough appropriate employment opportunities for a growing number of older workers in the workforce of the future? The evidence for a positive response is far from clear or compelling. Sicker examines the prospective place of the aging worker in the employment environment of the 21st century in light of the restructuring of American business and the world of work in the final decades of the last century. In doing so, he raises serious concerns about the validity and utility of some of the neoclassical economic ideas and assumptions that have become part of the conventional wisdom of our time. Sicker contends that these dubious propositions have unwittingly contributed signficantly to the problem through their manifestation in public policy. However, the principal focus of his analysis is not on economic theory as such, but on the realities and uncertainties that an aging American workforce will face in the decades to come. This book is significant reading for scholars, researchers, and the general public interested in labor force and aging policy issues.

Over the past four decades, the world's most developed economies (in Europe, North-America, and Australasia) have faced massive structural change. Industrial sectors, which were once considered the economic backbone of these societies, have shrunk inexorably in terms of size and economic significance, while service sectors have taken over as the primary engines of output and employment expansion. This book is a systematic attempt to understand this transition andits profound implications for the economy, politics, and society, with a central focus on job creation and destruction.