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Contracts Offered by Bureaucrats

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  • Fahad Khalil
  • Doyoung Kim
  • Jacques Lawarrée

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Fahad Khalil & Doyoung Kim & Jacques Lawarrée, 2013. "Contracts Offered by Bureaucrats," CESifo Working Paper Series 4511, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4511
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    bureaucracy; fixed budgets; power of incentives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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