Incentives and the Sorting of Altruistic Agents into Street-Level Bureaucracies

Margaretha Buurman () and Robert Dur
Additional contact information
Margaretha Buurman: Dept. of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam

No 08-113/1, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: Many street-level bureaucrats (such as caseworkers) have the dual task of helping some clients, while sanctioning others. We develop a model of such a street-level bureaucracy and study the implications of its personnel policy on the self-selection and allocation decisions of agents who differ in altruism towards clients. When bureaucrats are paid flat wages, they do not sanction, and the most altruistic types sort into bureaucracy. Pay-for-performance induces some bureaucrats to sanction, but necessitates an increase in expected wage compensation, which can result in sorting from both the top and bottom of the altruism distribution. We also show how client composition affects sorting and why street-level bureaucrats often experience an overload of clients.

Keywords: street-level bureaucracy; sorting; altruism; personnel policy; pay-for-performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J3 J4 L3 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-11-17, Revised 2010-10-14
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/08113.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Incentives and the Sorting of Altruistic Agents into Street-Level Bureaucracies (2012)
Working Paper: Incentives and the Sorting of Altruistic Agents into Street-Level Bureaucracies (2008)
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:tin:wpaper:20080113

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().