TY  - JOUR
AU  - Alesina,Alberto
AU  - Tabellini,Guido
TI  - Bureaucrats or Politicians?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10241
PY  - 2004
Y2  - January 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10241
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10241.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alberto F. Alesina
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-8388
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: aalesina@harvard.edu

Guido Tabellini
IGIER - Universita Bocconi
Via Salasco 5
20136 Milano
ITALY
Tel: 39 2 583 6 3305; fax 3302
E-Mail: guido.tabellini@unibocconi.it
AB  - Policies are typically chosen by politicians and bureaucrats. This paper investigates the e fficiency criteria for allocating policy tasks to elected policymakers (politicians) or non elected bureaucrats. Politicians are more efficient for tasks that do not involve too much specific technical ability relative to effort; there is uncertainty about ex post preferences of the public and flexibility is valuable; time inconsistency is not an issue; small but powerful vested interests do not have large stakes in the policy outcome; effective decisions over policies require taking into account policy complementarities and compensating the losers. We then compare this benchmark with the case in which politicians choose when to delegate and we show that the two generally differ.
ER  -