Bureaucrats or Politicians? Part I: A Single Policy Task

@article{Alesina2007BureaucratsOP,
  title={Bureaucrats or Politicians? Part I: A Single Policy Task},
  author={Alberto F. Alesina and Guido Tabellini},
  journal={The American Economic Review},
  year={2007},
  volume={97},
  pages={169-179}
}
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… 
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References

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Bureaucrats or Politicians? Part II: Multiple Policy Tasks
Bureaucrats or Politicians? Comment
Alesina and Tabellini (2007) investigate the normative criteria for allocating policy tasks to bureaucrats versus politicians. While they establish criteria with respect to a number of parameters,…
Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policy Making under Separate Powers
In this path-breaking book, David Epstein and Sharyn O'Halloran produce the first unified theory of policy making between the legislative and executive branches. Examining major US policy initiatives…
The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government
We build a simple model to capture the major virtues and drawbacks of making public officials accountable (i.e., subjecting them to reelection): On the one hand, accountablity allows the public to…
Does delegation of fiscal policy to an independent agency make a difference? Evidence from intergovernmental transfers in India
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What determines the size and form of redistributive programs, the extent and type of public goods provision, the burden of taxation across alternative tax bases, the size of government deficits, and…
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Information, Polarization and Delegation in Democracy
This paper investigates the merits of different democratic institutions when politics is uni-dimensional, there is uncertainty both about the preferences of the future electorate and the future…
The Economics of Career Concerns, Part II: Application to Missions and Accountability of Government Agencies
The paper uses a simple multitask career concern model in order to analyse the incentives of government agencies' officials. Incentives are impaired by the agency pursuing multiple missions. A lack…
Political Economics and Macroeconomic Policy
This paper surveys the recent literature on the theory of macroeconomic policy. We study the effect of various incentive constraints on the policy making process, such as lack of credibility,…
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