TY  - JOUR
AU  - Rauch,James E.
TI  - Choosing a Dictator: Bureaucracy and Welfare in Less Developed Polities
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5196
PY  - 1995
Y2  - July 1995
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5196
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5196.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James E. Rauch
Department of Economics
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0508
Tel: 858/534-2405
Fax: 858/534-7040
E-Mail: jrauch@weber.ucsd.edu
AB  - Recent work in the sociology of economic development has emphasized the establishment of a professional government bureaucracy in place of political appointees as an important component of the institutional environment in which private enterprise can flourish.  I focus on the role that internal promotion can play in bringing to power individuals who highly value (relative to income) imposition of their preferences over collective goods on the public.  Such individuals restrain the corruption of their subordinates as a byproduct of their efforts to implement their preferences using tax revenue.  Within this hierarchical framework I investigate the effects of varying subordinate compensation levels and of recruiting them meritocratically.
ER  -