Managerial talent, motivation, and self-selection into public management

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Delfgaauw, Josse; Dur, Robert
• 署名单位: Erasmus University Rotterdam; Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC; Tinbergen Institute
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.06.007
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 654-660
• 关键词: Public management; Public service motivation; Managerial ability; self-selection; Compensating differentials

摘要

The quality of public management is a recurrent concern in many countries. Calls to attract the economy's best and brightest managers to the public sector abound. This paper studies self-selection into managerial positions in the public and private sector, using a model of a perfectly competitive economy where people differ in managerial ability and in public service motivation. We find that, if demand for public sector output is not too high, the equilibrium return to managerial ability is always higher in the private sector. As a result, relatively many of the more able managers self-select into the private sector. Since this outcome is efficient, our analysis implies that attracting a more able managerial workforce to the public sector by increasing remuneration to private-sector levels is not cost-efficient. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.