Hierarchy and Information

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Rogger, Daniel; Somani, Ravi
• 署名单位: The World Bank
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104823
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: information; bureaucrats; Bureaucratic beliefs; public administration; decentralization

摘要

The information public officials use to make decisions determines how public resources are distributed and the effectiveness of public policy. This paper develops a measurement approach for assessing the accuracy of a set of fundamental bureaucratic beliefs and provides experimental evidence on the possi-bility of 'evidence briefings' sent by senior members of the hierarchy improving that accuracy. The errors of public officials are large, with over 50 percent of officials making errors that are at least 50 percent of objective benchmark data. Officials at organizations at the lowest tier of government hierarchy make errors that are a third of a standard deviation smaller than those made by officials at higher-tier organi-zations. The provision of evidence briefings reduces errors by a quarter of a standard deviation, implying evidence can play a substantial role in influencing the accuracy of bureaucratic beliefs relative to organi-zational design.(c) 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V.