I integrate Current Population Survey data from 2005 through 2010 with data on a wide range of employee benefits to compare the cost of those benefits for federal employees and for workers in the private sector who have similar observable characteristics. Federal benefits were about 48 percent higher, on average, than the benefits received by similar private-sector workers, which led to roughly a 16 percent difference in total compensation (the sum of benefits and wages). Much of the higher cost of federal benefits stems from differences in retirement benefits. The government provides employees defined-benefits pensions and subsidized health insurance in retirement; arrangements that have become uncommon in the private sector. The distribution of compensation also differed between the sectors, such that less-educated federal workers tended to earn much more than their private-sector counterparts, whereas highly-educated workers tended to receive higher compensation in the private sector.

I use Current Population Survey data from 2005 through 2010 to compare the wages of federal employees and workers in the private sector who have similar observable characteristics. The distribution of wages differed drastically between the federal and private sectors. In particular, I find that federal employees with no more than a high school diploma earned 21% more, on average, than their private‐sector counterparts, whereas those with a professional degree or doctorate earned 23% less. Overall, the average of federal wages was about 2% higher than the average wage of similar private‐sector workers. Other researchers have found larger differences because they used log‐linearized models, which result in comparisons of geometric means. I show that arithmetic means are more relevant in the context of the relationship between a government's compensation policy and its budget. The discrepancy between differences in arithmetic and geometric means occurs because the wages of federal employees were much less dispersed than those of employees with similar characteristics in the private sector. (JEL J31, J38, J45)

We use administrative data on federal civilian workers' accounts in their employer-provided defined contribution plan, called the thrift savings plan (TSP), to provide new evidence on the effects of employer matching and defaults on workers' savings behavior. The empirical analysis relies on exogenous variation stemming from two natural experiments caused by policy changes to the TSP: the establishment of an employer match for workers hired after 1983 and the introduction of automatic enrollment for workers hired after July 2010. We find that the introduction of the employer match lead to a higher increase in both participation and contribution rates compared to the subsequent switch to automatic enrollment. In terms of portfolio allocations, we find that matching and automatic enrollment had small and minimal effects, respectively.

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