La distribuzione dei salari in Italia: un confronto tra pubblico e privato

This paper contributes to the literature on public sector wage premium presenting least squares and quantile regression estimates of the public-private wage differential in Italy. Using data from the Bank of Italy’s SHIW for 1998, we find that the public sector pays more on average, and that the returns to various human capital characteristics are different in the two sectors. The public sector wage premium is larger for male workers with low levels of education and for female, especially with higher level of education. The quantile regression results suggest that the gap is more favourable for those on the left tail of the wage distribution. Furthermore, the return to education increases monotonically over the distribution in both sectors, and it is higher in the public sector starting from the median quantile, while the return of experience shows a decrease over quantiles and is constantly higher in the private sector.