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Journal of Asian Economics 20 (2009) 34–49 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Asian Economics Public–private sector segmentation in the Pakistani labour market Monazza Aslam *, Geeta Kingdon Department of Economics, University of Oxford, United Kingdom A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: This study investigates public–private sector wage differentials for male and female waged Received 14 November 2007 employees in Pakistan. This is done using latest nationally representative data from the Received in revised form 6 June 2008 Pakistan Living Standards Measurement Survey (PSLM) 2005. We adopt three methodol- Accepted 20 June 2008 ogies to obtain robust estimates of the wage differential and the results reveal that public sector workers enjoy large wage premia. The gross pro-public wage differential is much JEL classification: larger for women than for men. Our findings also show that while private and public sector J3 workers’ differing characteristics ‘explain’ a larger proportion of the private–public wage gap J7 for men, this is not the case for women. Keywords: 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Public–private Wage-differentials Gender South Asia Pakistan 1. Introduction The Pakistani labour market is characterised by very large wage gaps between public and private sector workers. In 2004