To Elect or to Appoint? Bias, Information, and Responsiveness of Bureaucrats and Politicians
44 Pages Posted: 25 May 2010 Last revised: 4 Feb 2012
Date Written: October 22, 2011
Abstract
In this paper, we address empirically the trade-offs involved in choosing between bureaucrats and politicians. In order to do this, we need to map institutions of selection and retention of public officials to the type of public officials they induce. We do this by specifying a collective decision-making model, and exploiting its equilibrium information to obtain estimates of the unobservable types. We focus on criminal decisions across US states' Supreme Courts. We find that justices that are shielded from voters' influence (“bureaucrats”) on average (i) have better information, (ii) are more likely to change their preconceived opinions about a case, and (iii) are more effective (make less mistakes) than their elected counterparts (”politicians”). We evaluate how performance would change if the courts replaced majority rule with unanimity rule.
JEL Classification: D72, D78, C13
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
A Political Economy Model of Congressional Careers
By Daniel Diermeier, Michael P. Keane, ...
-
By Francesco Caselli and Massimo Morelli
-
A Political Economy Model of Congressional Careers, Second Version
By Daniel Diermeier, Michael P. Keane, ...
-
A Political Economy Model of Congressional Careers: Supplementary Material
By Daniel Diermeier, Michael P. Keane, ...
-
Mixed Equilibrium in a Downsian Model with a Favored Candidate
-
By Matthias Messner and Mattias Polborn
-
Political Careers or Career Politicians?
By Andrea Mattozzi and Antonio Merlo
-
Political Careers or Career Politicians?
By Andrea Mattozzi and Antonio Merlo
-
Political Careers or Career Politicians?
By Andrea Mattozzi and Antonio Merlo
-
Political Careers Or Career Politicians? Second Version
By Andrea Mattozzi and Antonio Merlo