Intergovernmental Grants and Bureaucratic Power

Matz Dahlberg (), Heléne Lundqvist and Eva Mörk ()

No 2008:12, Working Paper Series from Uppsala University, Department of Economics

Abstract: In their role as agenda setters and implementers of political decisions, bureaucrats potentially have the power to influence decisions in their own favor. It is however difficult to empirically test whether bureaucrats actually are involved in such actions. In this paper we suggest and apply a new way of testing the hypothesis that bureaucrats can and do in fact affect policy to their own benefit. Making use of a discontinuity in the Swedish grant system, we estimate causal effects of intergovernmental grants on different types of personnel employed by the local governments. On the margin, we find a large, positive effect of grants on the number of bureaucrats in the central administration, but no effects on the number of personnel in other important sectors run by the local government (child care, schools and elderly care). These results support the view that bureaucrats are able to, and do indeed, affect the allocation of grants within municipalities to support own goals.

Keywords: Fiscal federalism; grants; bureaucrats; rent seeking; discontinuity analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 H11 H70 H83 J45 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2008-10-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Intergovernmental Grants and Bureaucratic Power (2008)
Working Paper: Intergovernmental grants and bureaucratic power (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2008_012

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