Leaders affect performance in many kinds of organizations: business, government, and non-profit. This award funds four different projects that will use novel data sources to shed new light on the kinds of college graduates who enter bureaucratic careers, the choices they make about how to allocate their time to various tasks, and how political connections may help them advance. The results are important for economic science for two reasons. First, it is known that government performance is key to overall economic performance for developing countries, which is one reason why political corruption can be a barrier to economic growth. Understanding the circumstances that lead to high-functioning governments is a first step to determining how policies, such as anti-corruption programs or rules governing bureaucratic promotion, may spur economic growth. Second, testing theories about how local government officials allocate their time across competing priorities is a test of more general economic theories of government. The research team will use new data from China to test these hypotheses; thus, the project can help U.S. businesses to navigate the complexities of working in China and will help us understand the role of government in China?s rapid economic growth.
The PIs plan to explore who chooses to become a bureaucrat, what factors affect career success, and what groups of officials (city mayors and party secretaries) do once they have attained higher office. The research will analyze how each of these questions is affected by anti-corruption policies. The PIs will collect several novel datasets for analysis, using information provided by universities, information published in national and local city newspapers, data from civil service exam results and from university libraries, and biographical information available on the Web. The PIs will employ novel identification strategies and the research contributes new data and methods to the literature on bureaucratic governance in an international context. In addition to contributing to the academic literature, the results of this research also will provide inputs into how best to reduce corruption, improve governance, hence accelerate economic growth in developing countries.
