The Economics of Career Concerns, Part II: Application to Missions and Accountability of Government Agencies

Mathias Dewatripont (), Ian Jewitt and Jean Tirole

Review of Economic Studies, 1999, vol. 66, issue 1, pages 199-217

Abstract: This paper uses a simple multitask career concern model in order to analyze the incentives of government agency officials. Incentives are impaired by the agency pursuing multiple missions. A lack of focus is even more problematic in the case of fuzzy missions, that is when outsiders are uncertain about the exact nature of the missions actually pursued by the agency. Consequently, agencies pursuing multiple missions receive less autonomy. The paper further shows that professionalization creates a sense of mission for the agency and that the specialization of officials raises their incentives. Last, the paper compares its predictions with the stylized facts on government bureaucracies. Copyright 1999 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

Date: 1999
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6527%2819990 ... 0.CO%3B2-1&origin=bc full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

Related works:
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:restud:v:66:y:1999:i:1:p:199-217

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0034-6527

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economic Studies is edited by Andrea Prat, Bruno Biais, Kjetil Storesletten and Enrique Sentana

More articles in Review of Economic Studies from Blackwell Publishing
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().