IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/10540.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rule-Based Civil Service : Evidence from a Nationwide Teacher Reform in Mexico

Author

Listed:
  • Bedoya,Juan
  • De Hoyos Navarro,Rafael E.
  • Estrada,Ricardo

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of a civil service reform on the skills profile of new teachers in Mexico. The reform mandated the use of rule-based recruitment over discretionary hiring. The results show that the reform led to hiring teachers with higher cognitive skills. The paper also shows that an improvement in the bottom of the skills distribution of new hires drove this change. Two channels explain these effects. First, the reform decreased the prevalence of discretionary hires, who tended to be drawn from the bottom of the skills distribution. Second, the reform improved the screening efficiency of rule-based hiring, making cognitive skills more important determinants of hiring outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Bedoya,Juan & De Hoyos Navarro,Rafael E. & Estrada,Ricardo, 2023. "Rule-Based Civil Service : Evidence from a Nationwide Teacher Reform in Mexico," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10540, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10540
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099354508072332378/pdf/IDU00398a50408dcd04a9b0a76a09eb52058468f.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guo Xu, 2018. "The Costs of Patronage: Evidence from the British Empire," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(11), pages 3170-3198, November.
    2. Rauch, James E, 1995. "Bureaucracy, Infrastructure, and Economic Growth: Evidence from U.S. Cities during the Progressive Era," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 968-979, September.
    3. Stephen Nickell & Glenda Quintini, 2002. "The Consequences of The Decline in Public Sector Pay in Britain: A Little Bit of Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(477), pages 107-118, February.
    4. Sebastian Gallegos & Christopher Neilson & Franco Calle, 2019. "Screening and Recruiting Talent At Teacher Colleges Using Pre-College Academic Achievement," Working Papers 2019-4, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    5. Grönqvist, Erik & Vlachos, Jonas, 2016. "One size fits all? The effects of teachers' cognitive and social abilities on student achievement," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 138-150.
    6. Gergely Ujhelyi, 2014. "Civil Service Rules and Policy Choices: Evidence from US State Governments," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 338-380, May.
    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. Ricardo Estrada & María Lombardi, 2020. "Skills and Selection into Teaching: Evidence from Latin America," Department of Economics Working Papers wp_gob_2020_10, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
    2. Canen, Nathan & Ch, Rafael & Wantchekon, Leonard, 2023. "Political uncertainty and the forms of state capture," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    3. Bostashvili, David & Ujhelyi, Gergely, 2019. "Political budget cycles and the civil service: Evidence from highway spending in US states," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 17-28.
    4. Valsecchi, Michele, 2016. "Corrupt Bureaucrats: The Response of Non-Elected Officials to Electoral Accountability," Working Papers in Economics 684, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    5. Ujhelyi, Gergely, 2017. "A köztisztviselői törvények hatása a kormányzati kiadásokra [The effects of civil-service legislation on government spending]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 885-914.
    6. Ujhelyi, Gergely, 2014. "Civil service reform," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 15-25.
    7. Daniel Gibbs, 2020. "Civil service reform, self‐selection, and bureaucratic performance," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 279-304, July.
    8. Simon Burgess & Carol Propper & Marisa Ratto & Emma Tominey, 2017. "Incentives in the Public Sector: Evidence from a Government Agency," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 117-141, October.
    9. James G. MacKinnon & Morten Ørregaard Nielsen & Matthew D. Webb, 2023. "Fast and reliable jackknife and bootstrap methods for cluster‐robust inference," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(5), pages 671-694, August.
    10. Adam Kapor & Mohit Karnani & Christopher Neilson, 2024. "Aftermarket Frictions and the Cost of Off-Platform Options in Centralized Assignment Mechanisms," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(7), pages 2346-2395.
    11. Jing Song & Mengyuan Li & Shaosong Wang & Tao Ye, 2022. "To What Extent Does Environmental Regulation Influence Emission Reduction? Evidence from Local and Neighboring Locations in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-9, August.
    12. Stéphane Straub, 2000. "Factores determinantes empíricos de las buenas instituciones: ¿sabemos algo a ciencia cierta?," Research Department Publications 4216, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    13. Yong Cai, 2022. "Linear Regression with Centrality Measures," Papers 2210.10024, arXiv.org.
    14. Kahn, Matthew E. & Sun, Weizeng & Wu, Jianfeng & Zheng, Siqi, 2021. "Do political connections help or hinder urban economic growth? Evidence from 1,400 industrial parks in China," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    15. Guo, Jingyuan & Deng, Kent, 2024. "Laying off old guards to rebuild state capacity: Deng Xiaoping’s bloodless coup d’etat in post-Mao China, 1980-2000," Economic History Working Papers 126083, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    16. Fabien Postel-Vinay & Hélène Turon, 2007. "The Public Pay Gap in Britain: Small Differences That (Don't?) Matter," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(523), pages 1460-1503, October.
    17. Tukiainen, Janne & Blesse, Sebastian & Bohne, Albrecht & Giuffrida, Leonardo M. & Jääskeläinen, Jan & Luukinen, Ari & Sieppi, Antti, 2024. "What are the priorities of bureaucrats? Evidence from conjoint experiments with procurement officials," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    18. Philipp Barteska & Jay Euijung Lee, 2024. "Bureaucrats and the Korean export miracle," Discussion Papers 2024-11, Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP).
    19. Forand, Jean Guillaume, 2019. "Civil service and the growth of government," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 1-1.
    20. Voth, Hans-Joachim & Xu, Guo, 2019. "Patronage for Productivity: Selection and Performance in the Age of Sail," CEPR Discussion Papers 13963, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    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:wbk:wbrwps:10540. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.