EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Bureaucrats or Politicians? Part I: A Single Policy Task

Alberto Alesina and Guido Tabellini

American Economic Review, 2007, vol. 97, issue 1, 169-179

Abstract: This paper investigates the normative criteria that guide the allocation of a policy task to an elected politician versus an independent bureaucrat. The bureaucrat is preferable for technical tasks for which ability is more important than effort, or if there is great uncertainty about whether the policymaker has the required abilities. The optimal allocation of redistributive tasks is ambiguous, and depends on how the bureaucrat can be instructed. But irrespective of the normative conclusion, the politician prefers not to delegate redistributive policies. (JEL D72, D73, D82)

Date: 2007
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.97.1.169
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (295)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.97.1.169 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Bureaucrats or Politicians? Part I: A Single Policy Task (2007) Downloads
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:aea:aecrev:v:97:y:2007:i:1:p:169-179

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:97:y:2007:i:1:p:169-179