What Are the Priorities of Bureaucrats? Evidence from Conjoint Experiments with Procurement Officials

Janne Tukiainen, Sebastian Blesse, Albrecht Bohne, Leonardo M. Giuffrida, Jan Jääskeläinen, Ari Luukinen and Antti Sieppi

No 10199, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: While effective bureaucracy is crucial for state capacity, its decision-making remains a black box. We elicit preferences of 900+ real-world public procurement officials in Finland and Germany. This is an important pursuit as they report having sizeable discretion and minimal extrinsic incentives. Through conjoint experiments, we identify the relative importance of multiple features of procurement outcomes. Officials prioritize avoiding unexpectedly high prices but not seeking low prices. Avoiding winners with prior bad performance is the most important feature. Officials avoid very low competition, while litigation risks and regional favoritism play minor roles. Personal preferences and office interests appear well-aligned among bureaucrats.

Keywords: bureaucrats; public procurement; preferences; conjoint experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 D90 H11 H57 H83 K41 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10199.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: What are the priorities of bureaucrats? Evidence from conjoint experiments with procurement officials (2024)
Working Paper: What Are the Priorities of Bureaucrats? Evidence from Conjoint Experiments with Procurement Officials (2021)
Working Paper: What are the priorities of bureaucrats? Evidence from conjoint experiments with procurement officials (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10199

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().