Political and economic determinants of county government pay

Lentz, Bernard F.

doi:10.1007/bf00123783

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…13. Lentz (1981) argues that the terms and conditions of employment are used to purchase votes and political loyalty of government workers. Bellante and Long (1981) contend that public employees constitute a special interest group to which vote-maximizing politicians will respond by offering higher pay.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Municipal annexation and local monopoly power

Gonzalez

Mehay

1987

Public Choice

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Municipal annexation and local monopoly power

Gonzalez

Mehay

1987

Public Choice

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“…Following Lentz (1981), the local government officials can purchase the electoral support of local government employees by increasing their economic benefits. Given that job security is valued (particularly when the wage exceeds the opportunity cost) and given the possibility of layoffs under a seniority system, we assume that the fraction of public employees voting for the incumbent, y, is an increasing function of the level of local government employment and is known with 'These last two assumptions are identical to ones (explicit and implicit) made by Courant, 'For a given value of I , differentiation of (8) yields Gramlich, and Rubinfeld (1979).…”

Section: R ( N + I N ) -I N = Omentioning

confidence: 99%

The Median Voter, Voting, and Local Government Employment*

Bender

Fixler

1989

Journal of Regional Science

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This paper provides an explanation for the level of local government employment by developing a median voter model that allows for migration into and out of the city, a local government balanced-budget constraint, and voting behavior by public employees that reflects their role as both demanders and suppliers of local government goods. Unlike previous research, the model developed here explicitly considers voting (for the incumbent) probability density functions which furthermore need not be stationary. The main conclusions of the model are that, ceteris paribus, it is plausible that the level of local government employment varies inversely with the public employee wage demand and with the elasticity of the privately employed voting population with respect to the local tax rate but directly with the voter participation rate of public employees. Contrary to previous theoretical research, there is no determinate relationship between the level of local government employment and the voter participation rate of privately employed citizens. Inferences concerning the structure of local government are also discussed.

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“…6 For a slack maximizer the outcome is not certain since the bureau may choose to spend some of its rent on an inefficient production process characterized by a > 0. 7 But presumably there are better uses of these rents, such as by hiring excessive staff or overpaying employees in exchange for political support (Belante and Long, 1981;DiLorenzo, 1981;Lentz, 1981;Mehay and Gonzalez, 1986). Thus, given Wyckoff's assumption, switching to a bureaucratic supplier is not likely to alter the publicness mix.…”

Section: Bureaucratic Preferences and The Degree Of Publicnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…10. See expenditure studies by Romer and Rosenthal (1979a, 1979b, 1982, Wagner and Weber (1975), Shapiro and Sonstelie (1981), and wage studies by Mehay and Gonzalez (1986) and Lentz (1981).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%