Contracts Offered by Bureaucrats

Fahad Khalil, Doyoung Kim and Jacques Lawarree

No 4511, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We examine the power of incentives in bureaucracies by studying contracts offered by a bureaucrat to her agent. The bureaucrat operates under a fixed budget, optimally chosen by a funding authority, and she can engage in policy drift, which we define as inversely related to her intrinsic motivation. Interaction between a fixed budget and policy drift results in low-powered incentives. We discuss how the bureaucrat may benefit from stricter accountability as it leads to larger budgets. Low-powered incentives remain even in an alternative centralized setting, where the funding authority contracts directly with the agent using the bureaucrat to monitor output.

Keywords: bureaucracy; fixed budgets; power of incentives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Journal Article: Contracts offered by bureaucrats (2013)
Working Paper: Contracts Offered by Bureaucrats (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4511

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