IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/20301.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inducing Leaders to Take Risky Decisions: Dismissal, Tenure, and Term Limits

Author

Listed:
  • Philippe Aghion
  • Matthew Jackson

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the problem of whether and/or when to replace a leader (agent) when no monetary rewards are available, and it is the leader's competence rather than effort that is being evaluated. The only decisions that the leader takes over time are whether to undertake risky but potentially high payoff projects, the choice of which can reveal the leader's competency. If the value of foregone projects are observed, then the probability that a leader is replaced is bell-shaped and saw-toothed over time. If the value of foregone projects are not observed, and the leader's competency is only indirectly inferrable through the success or failure of projects that the leader undertakes, then the incentives of the leader depend on the replacement strategy. If the principal can commit to a replacement strategy in advance, then we show that (approximately) optimal mechanisms either involve a probationary period and then indefinite tenure, or else a random dismissal strategy. If instead commitment is impossible, and for instance voters regularly choose whether to replace the leader, then there are poor incentives and inefficiently low payoffs, even below that of simply replacing the leader in every period. Incentives can be improved via term limits.

Suggested Citation

  • Philippe Aghion & Matthew Jackson, 2014. "Inducing Leaders to Take Risky Decisions: Dismissal, Tenure, and Term Limits," NBER Working Papers 20301, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20301
    Note: POL
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20301.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    2. Alberto Alesina & Guido Tabellini, 2007. "Bureaucrats or Politicians? Part I: A Single Policy Task," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 169-179, March.
    3. Taylor, Curtis R, 2000. "The Old-Boy Network and the Young-Gun Effect," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(4), pages 871-891, November.
    4. George J. Mailath & Larry Samuelson, 2001. "Who Wants a Good Reputation?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(2), pages 415-441.
    5. Alesina, Alberto & Tabellini, Guido, 2008. "Bureaucrats or politicians? Part II: Multiple policy tasks," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3-4), pages 426-447, April.
    6. Alessandro Bonatti & Johannes Horner, 2011. "Career Concerns and Market Structure," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1831R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Oct 2013.
    7. Chevalier, Judith & Ellison, Glenn, 1997. "Risk Taking by Mutual Funds as a Response to Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1167-1200, December.
    8. Canes-Wrone, Brandice & Shotts, Kenneth W., 2007. "When Do Elections Encourage Ideological Rigidity?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(2), pages 273-288, May.
    9. Mattozzi, Andrea & Merlo, Antonio, 2008. "Political careers or career politicians?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3-4), pages 597-608, April.
    10. Kahn, Charles & Huberman, Gur, 1988. "Two-sided Uncertainty and "Up-or-Out" Contracts," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(4), pages 423-444, October.
    11. Carmichael, H Lorne, 1988. "Incentives in Academics: Why Is There Tenure?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(3), pages 453-472, June.
    12. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part II: Application to Missions and Accountability of Government Agencies," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 199-217.
    13. Navin Kartik & R. Preston McAfee, 2007. "Signaling Character in Electoral Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 852-870, June.
    14. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part II: Application to Missions and Accountability of Government Agencies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 199-217.
    15. Jean Tirole, 1996. "A Theory of Collective Reputations (with applications to the persistence of corruption and to firm quality)," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(1), pages 1-22.
    16. Claudio Ferraz & Frederico Finan, 2011. "Electoral Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from the Audits of Local Governments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1274-1311, June.
    17. Eddie Dekel & Yossi Feinberg, 2006. "Non-Bayesian Testing of a Stochastic Prediction," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 893-906.
    18. Prendergast, Canice & Stole, Lars, 1996. "Impetuous Youngsters and Jaded Old-Timers: Acquiring a Reputation for Learning," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1105-1134, December.
    19. Mailath, George J. & Samuelson, Larry, 2006. "Repeated Games and Reputations: Long-Run Relationships," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195300796.
    20. Alvaro Sandroni & Rann Smorodinsky & Rakesh V. Vohra, 2003. "Calibration with Many Checking Rules," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(1), pages 141-153, February.
    21. Harrington, Joseph E, Jr, 1993. "Economic Policy, Economic Performance, and Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 27-42, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marina Halac & Ilan Kremer, 2020. "Experimenting with Career Concerns," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 260-288, February.
    2. Scott C. Ganz, 2020. "Hyperopic Search: Organizations Learning About Managers Learning About Strategies," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 821-838, July.
    3. Mehmet Ekmekci & Leandro Gorno & Lucas Maestri & Jian Sun & Dong Wei, 2022. "Learning from Manipulable Signals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(12), pages 3995-4040, December.
    4. Benjamin Davies, 2022. "Why do experts give simple advice?," Papers 2209.11710, arXiv.org.
    5. Rahul Deb & Mallesh M. Pai & Maher Said, 2018. "Evaluating Strategic Forecasters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(10), pages 3057-3103, October.
    6. Fausto Panunzi & Nicola Pavoni & Guido Tabellini, 2020. "Economic Shocks and Populism: The Political Implications of Reference-Dependent Preferences," CESifo Working Paper Series 8539, CESifo.
    7. Timothy Perri, 2018. "Economics of evaluation (with special reference to promotion and tenure committees)," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 1-19, February.
    8. Deb, Rahul & Mitchell, Matthew & Pai, Mallesh M., 2022. "(Bad) reputation in relational contracting," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(2), May.
    9. Schottmüller, Christoph, 2019. "Too good to be truthful: Why competent advisers are fired," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 333-360.
    10. Rahul Deb & Matthew Mitchell & Mallesh Pai, 2019. "Our distrust is very expensive," Working Papers tecipa-632, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    11. Volker Laux, 2017. "Supporting and Assessing Agents," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(4), pages 995-1016, September.
    12. Raphael Boleslavsky, 2023. "Waiting for Fake News," Papers 2304.04053, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    13. Pavesi, Filippo & Scotti, Massimo, 2022. "Good lies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
      • Filippo Pavesi & Massimo Scotti, 2019. "Good Lies," Working Paper Series 39, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    14. Rohan DUTTA & Pierre-Yves YANNI, 2017. "On Inducing Agents with Term Limits to Take Appropriate Risk," Cahiers de recherche 06-2017, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    15. Yamasaki, Junichi, 2020. "Time horizon of government and public goods investment: Evidence from Japan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    16. Kim, Doyoung, 2017. "Motivating for new changes when agents have reputation concerns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 37-53.

    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. Ash, Elliott & MacLeod, W. Bentley, 2021. "Reducing partisanship in judicial elections can improve judge quality: Evidence from U.S. state supreme courts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    2. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Gino Gancia, 2010. "The political cost of reforms (preliminar version of working paper number 1360: Uncertainty, electoral incentives and political myopia)," Economics Working Papers 1250, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jun 2011.
    3. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Gino Gancia, 2013. "Uncertainty, Electoral Incentives and Political Myopia," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 373-400, May.
    4. Alessandra Bonfiglioli and Gino Gancia, 2010. "The Political Cost of Reforms," Working Papers 507, Barcelona School of Economics.
    5. Mathilde Maurel & Thomas Pernet-Coudrier, 2020. "New Evidence on the Soft Budget Constraint: Chinese Environmental Policy Effectiveness in Private versus SOEs," Post-Print halshs-02469382, HAL.
    6. Aytimur, R. Emre & Bruns, Christian, 2015. "On ignorant voters and busy politicians," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 252, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    7. Joanis, Marcelin, 2014. "Shared accountability and partial decentralization in local public good provision," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 28-37.
    8. Nobuhiro Mizuno & Ryosuke Okazawa, 2022. "Why do voters elect less qualified candidates?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 34(3), pages 443-477, July.
    9. Schinkel, M.P. & Tóth, L. & Tuinstra, J., 2014. "Discretionary Authority and Prioritizing in Government Agencies," CeNDEF Working Papers 14-15, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance.
    10. Calogero Guccio & Domenico Lisi & Ilde Rizzo, 2019. "When the purchasing officer looks the other way: on the waste effects of debauched local environment in public works execution," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 205-236, September.
    11. Iaryczower, Matias & Lewis, Garrett & Shum, Matthew, 2013. "To elect or to appoint? Bias, information, and responsiveness of bureaucrats and politicians," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 230-244.
    12. Scharfenkamp Katrin, 2016. "It’s About Connections – How the Economic Network of the German Federal Government Affects the Top Earners’ Average Income Tax Rate," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 236(4), pages 427-453, August.
    13. Chen, Yvonne Jie & Li, Pei & Lu, Yi, 2018. "Career concerns and multitasking local bureaucrats: Evidence of a target-based performance evaluation system in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 84-101.
    14. He, Zhenyu & Tang, Yuwei, 2023. "Local environmental constraints and firms’ export product quality: Evidence from China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    15. Mikel Berdud & Juan M. Cabasés Hita & Jorge Nieto, 2012. "Motivational Capital and Incentives in Health Care Organisations," Documentos de Trabajo - Lan Gaiak Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra 1209, Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra.
    16. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2013. "A Political Theory of Populism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(2), pages 771-805.
    18. Heski Bar-Isaac & Joyee Deb, 2021. "Reputation With Opportunities for Coasting," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 200-236.
    19. Aleksandar Vasilev, 2013. "On the cost of rent-seeking by government bureaucrats in a Real-Business-Cycle framework," Working Papers 2013_20, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    20. Vukovic, Vuk, 2011. "Political agency model of persistent electoral success with endogenous rents," MPRA Paper 39085, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 25 Jan 2012.
    21. Mathilde Maurel & Thomas Pernet, 2021. "New evidence on the soft budget constraint: Chinese environmental policy effectiveness in SOE-dominated cities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 111-142, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • 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
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

    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:nbr:nberwo:20301. 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/nberrus.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.