American Economic Review Vol. 97 No. 1 2007

Bureaucrats or Politicians? Part I: A Single Policy Task

Alberto Alesina¹; Guido Tabellini²

¹ Department of Economics, Harvard University, 210 Littauer Center, Cambridge, MA 02138, National Bureau of Economic Research, and Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). · ² IGIER at Bocconi University, Via Salasco, 5 20136 Milan, Italy, CESIfo, CEPR, and Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR).

Abstract

This paper investigates the normative criteria that guide the allocation of a policy task to an elected politician versus an independent bureaucrat. The bureaucrat is preferable for technical tasks for which ability is more important than effort, or if there is great uncertainty about whether the policymaker has the required abilities. The optimal allocation of redistributive tasks is ambiguous, and depends on how the bureaucrat can be instructed. But irrespective of the normative conclusion, the politician prefers not to delegate redistributive policies.

DOI

10.1257/aer.97.1.169

Volume

97

Issue

1

Pages

169-179

Language

en

Sources

openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

Cite

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