Laboratories of Democracy: Policy Experimentation under Decentralization

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cheng, Chen; Li, Christopher
• 署名单位: Johns Hopkins University; Yale University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20160257
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 125-154
• 关键词: Career concerns; Yardstick competition; ACCOUNTABILITY; COORDINATION; incentives; BEHAVIOR

摘要

We develop a model of policy experimentation in which the policy decisions of local and national politicians are driven by career concerns. When politicians' payoffs are convex in their reputation and policymaking is opaque, local politicians experiment by introducing more diverse policies than national politicians do. The welfare implications of decentralization depend on homogeneity between districts. In particular, learning about policies is greater under decentralization if and only if the districts are sufficiently homogeneous. The model delivers novel testable hypotheses. Decentralization should be positively correlated with more diverse (uniform) local policies among countries with opaque (transparent) policymaking.