Are Bureaucrats Really Paid Like Bureaucrats?

Ruben Enikolopov

No 13051, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Abstract Traditionally, bureaucrats are viewed as a stereotypical example of employees with flat pay schedules and low-powered incentive schemes. This paper provides evidence that the wages of a particular group of senior bureaucrats – city managers in US cities – are tightly connected to city outcomes. City outcomes affect city managers' wages not only in the city in which they are currently employed, but also in the city in which they work afterwards. At the same time, the salaries of city managers do not react to observable exogenous shocks to city outcomes. These results suggest that the relationship between city outcomes and the wages of city managers reflects a reward for performance, rather than rent extraction, and that the power of these incentives is sufficiently strong.

Keywords: City managers; Bureaucrats; Pay for performance; Incentives of politicians (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H7 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13051 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Are Bureaucrats Really Paid Like Bureaucrats? (2011)
Working Paper: Are Bureaucrats Really Paid Like Bureaucrats? (2011)
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:cpr:ceprdp:13051

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13051

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().