Bureaucratic rents and life satisfaction

Arbeitspapier

The monopoly position of the public bureaucracy in providing public services allows government employees to acquire rents. Those rents can involve higher wages, monetary and non-monetary fringe benefits (e.g. pensions and staffing), and/or bribes. We propose a direct measure to capture the total of these rents: the difference in reported subjective well-being between bureaucrats and people working in the private sector. In a sample of 38 countries, we find large variations in the extent of rents in the public bureaucracy. The extent of rents is determined by differences in institutional constraints and correlates with perceptions of corruption. We find judicial independence to be of major relevance for a tamed bureaucracy.

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• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 1964

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption ; General Welfare; Well-Being ; Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs: General ; Public Sector Labor Markets ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law ; Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government ; Public Administration; Public Sector Accounting and Audits
• Subject: public sector ; rents ; life satisfaction ; corruption ; judicial independence ; Öffentliche Verwaltung ; Beamte ; Rent Seeking ; Korruption ; Schätzung ; Bürokratietheorie ; Europa ; Lateinamerika ; Lebenszufriedenheit

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Luechinger, Simon ; Meier, Stephan ; Stutzer, Alois
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2006

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/33615