Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness

Michael Best, David Szakonyi and Jonas Hjort

No 11968, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: How important are bureaucrats for the productivity of the state? And to what extent do the tradeoffs between different policies depend on the implementing bureaucrats’ effectiveness? Using data on 16million public procurement purchases in Russia during 2011–2016, we show that over 40 percent of the variation in quality-adjusted prices paid—our measure of performance—is due to the individual bureaucrats and organizations that manage procurement processes. Such differences in effectiveness matter for policy design. To illustrate, we show that a common procurement policy—bid preferences for domestic suppliers—dramatically improves performance, but only when implemented by ineffective bureaucrats

Keywords: State capacity; Bureaucrats; Public sector organizations; Procurement; Policy design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H1 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness (2023)
Working Paper: Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness (2017)
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