The Agency of Politics and Science

Corina Haita-Falah, Anke Gerber and Andreas Lange

VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: Motivated by the recent concerns of the scientists participating in the elaboration of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports, we study a principal-agent relationship between a politician and a researcher that captures some stylized facts regarding the involvement of politics into scientific research. The politician contracts with a researcher in order to get some scientific advice about a policy relevant variable. The politician trades off the policy that he would implement in the absence of any reelection concerns with a desire to please voters by choosing a policy that is supported by scientific advice and that turns out to be the ``right'' policy ex post. As a consequence, the politician bribes the researcher to bias his scientific advice towards the ideal policy of the politician. We study the optimal contracts under symmetric and under asymmetric information about the researcher's ability and concern for reputation, as well as the selection of a researcher by the politician. Thereby we identify several conflicts between the interests of the voters and those of the politician.

JEL-codes: D72 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-mic
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Related works:
Journal Article: THE AGENCY OF POLITICS AND SCIENCE (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113227

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