Public-Sector Employment in an Equilibrium Search and Matching Model

The Puzzle of Educated Unemployment in West Africa

“…They are governed by a Cobb-Douglas matching function that depends on the total public and private sector vacancies on the one hand and the total number of job seekers on the other hand. In our environment, the public sector and firms thus compete for the same pool of job seekers (Albrecht et al (2019)). This implies that policies targeting the public sector have direct repercussions on firms through a change in contact rates.…”

“…We assume that the public sector hires on the same labour market as the private sector; thus, changes (i.e. increases) in public vacancies or wages directly a ect the private sector by imposing a negative externality on the latter (see Bradley et al (2017) and Albrecht et al (2019) for similar examples in the case of England and Colombia, respectively). In contrast, profitable business ideas (i.e.…”

“…10 Search and matching models with a public sector include Burdett (2012), Gomes (2015), Bradley et al (2017), Yassin and Langot (2018) and Albrecht et al (2019). None of these papers relate to a Sub-Saharan or low-income economy.…”

The unintended consequences of meritocratic government hiring

“…Chassamboulli and Gomes (2019b) use a similar framework to analyze the education choices of workers. Albrecht, Robayo-Abril, and Vroman (2018) incorporate heterogeneous human capital and match specific productivity in the model to analyze various 5 For instance, in Spain public workers are selected through a set of exams known as oposiciones; in France, as concours or Grands Corps de l'Etat; in Italy, as concorso pubblico; in India, as the Staff Selection Commission -Combined Graduate Level Examination (SSC CGL); and in Turkey, as the Public Personnel Selection Examination (KPSS).…”

When Correspondence Studies Fail to Detect Hiring Discrimination

“…Being of North African origin leads to a significant drop in the callback rate when individuals apply to private sector vacancies (by about 2 points) but no penalty is associated with ethnicity in the public sector and this finding is robust to the introduction of a variety of controls related to the type of position applied for, employers' size and 1 Applicants left high school without acquiring a degree. 2 Candidates of French origin are defined as French citizens with French-sounding first and last names. Candidates of North African origin are defined as French citizens with North African sounding first and last names.…”