Public employees lining up at the polls—the conditional effect of living and working in the same municipality

TY - JOUR

T1 - Public employees lining up at the polls—the conditional effect of living and working in the same municipality

AU - Bhatti, Yosef

AU - Hansen, Kasper Møller

PY - 2013/9/1

Y1 - 2013/9/1

N2 - Do public employees vote more frequently than private employees? The turnout of public employees has been of central interest to public choice scholars for almost a century. Utilizing a government records dataset that is not subject to over-reporting and differential social desirability bias, we find that public employees voted 11-12 percentage points more than their counterparts in the private sector. In a multivariate analysis, however, the effect is only four to five percentage points greater for local government public employees, which is in the lower range of previous studies. We are able to distinguish between local government and central government employees and show that the latter vote two percentage points less than the former. Controlling for the specific type of educational background does not explain the public-private turnout differential. Finally, the effect of working and voting in the same municipality is larger for local government employees than other citizens. This is in accordance with their greater incentives as they elect their future employer, though the effect size is surprisingly small.

AB - Do public employees vote more frequently than private employees? The turnout of public employees has been of central interest to public choice scholars for almost a century. Utilizing a government records dataset that is not subject to over-reporting and differential social desirability bias, we find that public employees voted 11-12 percentage points more than their counterparts in the private sector. In a multivariate analysis, however, the effect is only four to five percentage points greater for local government public employees, which is in the lower range of previous studies. We are able to distinguish between local government and central government employees and show that the latter vote two percentage points less than the former. Controlling for the specific type of educational background does not explain the public-private turnout differential. Finally, the effect of working and voting in the same municipality is larger for local government employees than other citizens. This is in accordance with their greater incentives as they elect their future employer, though the effect size is surprisingly small.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Public employees

KW - Private employees

KW - Bureaucrats

KW - Turnout

KW - Public choice

U2 - 10.1007/s11127-012-9919-y

DO - 10.1007/s11127-012-9919-y

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0048-5829

VL - 156

SP - 611

EP - 629

JO - Public Choice

JF - Public Choice

IS - 3-4

ER -