Potential and Limits of Task-Oriented Comparison of Public Staff at the Federal State Level

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The central task of federal states is the provision of public services. As demand for public services is roughly proportional to population size, the number of public employees per inhabitant should be approximately the same in all states. Differences in public sector size may be interpreted as a measure of inefficiency in the production of public services. On behalf of the State Chancellery of Saxony, ifo Dresden analysed whether measures of public employment per inhabitant can be used for benchmarking purposes.