What are the priorities of bureaucrats? Evidence from conjoint experiments with procurement officials

Janne Tukiainen, Sebastian Blesse, Albrecht Bohne, Leonardo M. Giuffrida, Jan Jääskeläinen, Ari Luukinen and Antti Sieppi

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2024, vol. 227, issue C

Abstract: While effective bureaucracy is crucial for state capacity, its decision-making remains a black box. We elicit preferences of 900+ real-world public procurement officials in Finland and Germany. This is an important pursuit as they report having sizeable discretion and minimal extrinsic incentives. Through conjoint experiments, we identify the relative importance of multiple features of procurement outcomes. Officials prioritize avoiding unexpectedly high prices over seeking low prices. Avoiding winners with prior bad performance is the most important feature. Officials avoid very low competition, while litigation risks and regional favoritism matter less. Preferences and office interests appear well-aligned among bureaucrats.

Keywords: Bureaucrats; Public procurement; Conjoint experiments; Preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 D90 H11 H57 H83 K41 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268124003305
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: What Are the Priorities of Bureaucrats? Evidence from Conjoint Experiments with Procurement Officials (2023)
Working Paper: What Are the Priorities of Bureaucrats? Evidence from Conjoint Experiments with Procurement Officials (2021)
Working Paper: What are the priorities of bureaucrats? Evidence from conjoint experiments with procurement officials (2021)
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:eee:jeborg:v:227:y:2024:i:c:s0167268124003305

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106716

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().