Hjort, Jonas;
Best, Michael C;
Szakonyi, David;
(2023)
Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness.
The American Economic Review
(In press).
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Abstract
Bureaucrats implement policy. How important are they for a state’s productivity? And do the tradeoffs between policies depend on their effectiveness? Using data on 16 million public purchases in Russia, we show that 39 percent of the variation in prices paid for narrowly defined items is due to the individual bureaucrats and organizations who manage procurement. Low-price buyers also display higher spending quality. Theory suggests that such differences in effectiveness can be pivotal for policy design. To illustrate, we show that a common one—bid preferences for domestic suppliers—substantially improves procurement performance, but only when implemented by ineffective bureaucrats.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.201... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10169814 |
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