IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eth/wpswif/18-307.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Incentive Pay for Policy-makers?

Author

Listed:
  • Volker Britz

    (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

  • Afsoon Ebrahimi

    (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

  • Hans Gersbach

    (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Abstract

We study how to efficiently motivate policy-makers to solve political multitask problems. Political multi-task problems typically have outcomes that are difficult to measure. Moreover, there are conflicts among citizens about optimal policies and the agents have the power to tax the citizens to invest in better outcomes of some tasks. We develop a political agency model with two tasks and only one measurable outcome. In such an environment, policy-makers choose socially inefficient public good levels and expropriate minorities. A judicious combination of constitutional limits on taxation and incentive pay for policy-makers is second-best. Incentive pay is conditional on the public good level.

Suggested Citation

  • Volker Britz & Afsoon Ebrahimi & Hans Gersbach, 2018. "Incentive Pay for Policy-makers?," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 18/307, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:eth:wpswif:18-307
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-18-307.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mattozzi, Andrea & Merlo, Antonio, 2008. "Political careers or career politicians?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3-4), pages 597-608, April.
    2. Timothy Besley, 2004. "Joseph Schumpeter Lecture: Paying Politicians: Theory and Evidence," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(2-3), pages 193-215, 04/05.
    3. Desai, Mihir A. & Foley, C. Fritz & Hines, James Jr., 2006. "The demand for tax haven operations," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(3), pages 513-531, February.
    4. Ferraz, Claudio & Finan, Frederico S., 2008. "Motivating Politicians: The Impacts of Monetary Incentives on Quality and Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 3411, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Kotakorpi, Kaisa & Poutvaara, Panu, 2011. "Pay for politicians and candidate selection: An empirical analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 877-885, August.
    6. Susan Dynarski, 2002. "The Behavioral and Distributional Implications of Aid for College," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 279-285, May.
    7. Hans Gersbach, 2004. "Competition of Politicians for Incentive Contracts and Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 157-177, October.
    8. Gersbach, Hans & Liessem, Verena, 2008. "Incentive contracts and elections for politicians with multi-task problems," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 401-411, November.
    9. Yu‐Bong Lai, 2019. "Tax havens, income shifting, and redistributive taxation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 21(1), pages 81-97, February.
    10. Gersbach Hans, 2012. "Contractual Democracy," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(3), pages 823-851, December.
    11. Veronica Grembi & Tommaso Nannicini & Ugo Troiano, 2016. "Do Fiscal Rules Matter?," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 1-30, July.
    12. Slemrod, Joel & Wilson, John D., 2009. "Tax competition with parasitic tax havens," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1261-1270, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christian Staat & Colin R. Kuehnhanss, 2017. "Outside Earnings, Electoral Systems and Legislative Effort in the European Parliament," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 368-386, March.
    2. Kaisa Kotakorpi & Panu Poutvaara & Marko Tervio, 2013. "Returns to office in national and local politics," Discussion Papers 86, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    3. Andreas Peichl & Nico Pestel & Sebastian Siegloch, 2013. "The politicians’ wage gap: insights from German members of parliament," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 653-676, September.
    4. Berg, Heléne, 2018. "Is It Worth It? On the Returns to Holding Political Office," Research Papers in Economics 2018:5, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    5. Heléne Lundqvist, 2013. "Is it worth it? On the returns to holding political office," Working Papers 2013/14, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    6. Heléne Berg, 2018. "Is It Worth It? On the Returns to Holding Political Office," CESifo Working Paper Series 7406, CESifo.
    7. Heléne Lundqvist, 2013. "Is it worth it? On the returns to holding political office," Working Papers 2013/14, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    8. Susana Peralta & João Pereira dos Santos, 2020. "Who seeks reelection: local fiscal restraints and political selection," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 105-134, July.
    9. Duha T. Altindag & Elif S. Filiz & Erdal Tekin, 2020. "Does It Matter How and How Much Politicians are Paid?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 87(348), pages 1105-1132, October.
    10. Björn Kauder & Manuela Krause & Niklas Potrafke, 2018. "Electoral cycles in MPs’ salaries: evidence from the German states," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(4), pages 981-1000, August.
    11. Alessandro Fedele & Pierpaolo Giannoccolo, 2020. "Paying Politicians: Not Too Little, Not Too Much," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 87(346), pages 470-489, April.
    12. Heléne Berg, 2018. "Politicians' Payments in a Proportional Party System," CESifo Working Paper Series 7278, CESifo.
    13. Nicolas Gavoille, 2021. "Pay for politicians and campaign spending: evidence from the French municipal elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(3), pages 455-477, September.
    14. Berg, Heléne, 2020. "On the returns to holding political office (Is it worth it?)," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 840-865.
    15. Berg, Helene, 2018. "Politicians’ Payments in a Proportional Party System," Research Papers in Economics 2018:3, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    16. Thomas Braendle & Alois Stutzer, 2017. "Voters and Representatives: How Should Representatives Be Selected?," CREMA Working Paper Series 2017-05, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    17. Galasso, Vincenzo & Nannicini, Tommaso, 2011. "Competing on Good Politicians," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(1), pages 79-99, February.
    18. Cavalcanti, Francisco & Daniele, Gianmarco & Galletta, Sergio, 2018. "Popularity shocks and political selection," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 201-216.
    19. Massimo Bordignon & Matteo Gamalerio & Gilberto Turati, 2013. "Decentralization, Vertical Fiscal Imbalance, and Political Selection," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def002, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    20. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Gino Gancia, 2013. "Uncertainty, Electoral Incentives and Political Myopia," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 373-400, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    incentive contracts; politicians; multi-task problems.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eth:wpswif:18-307. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwethch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.