Policies are typically chosen by politicians and bureaucrats. This paper investigates the e fficiency criteria for … allocating policy tasks to elected policymakers (politicians) or non elected bureaucrats. Politicians are more efficient for … complementarities and compensating the losers. We then compare this benchmark with the case in which politicians choose when to delegate …

development. Just what makes for an effective bureaucracy and what are the building blocks of state capacity remain subject to … features of the environment in which bureaucrats operate. We connect this to discussions of bureaucratic systems, specifically …

bureaucracy in place of political appointees as an important component of the institutional environment in which private …

Meritocracies that aim to identify high-ability bureaucrats are less effective when performance is imperfectly observed …

We formally model the impact of presidential policymaking on the willingness of bureaucrats to exert effort and stay in … the government. In the model, centralized policy initiative by the president demotivates policy-oriented bureaucrats and … to quit are a range of moderate bureaucrats. More extreme bureaucrats may be willing to wait out an incumbent president …

European Patent Office; (iv) the national registry of local politicians; and (v) detailed data on local elections in Italy. We …

We demonstrate that personal connections amongst politicians have a significant impact on the voting behavior of U ….S. politicians. Networks based on alumni connections between politicians, as well as common seat locations on the chamber floor, are …

stated policy objectives of black officials, I find positive effects of black politicians on land tenancy and show that … exposure to black politicians decreased the black-white literacy gap by more than 7%. These results suggest that politician … race has large effects on public finance and individual outcomes over and above electoral preferences for redistribution …