Social Proximity and Bureaucrat Performance: Evidence from India / Guo Xu, Marianne Bertrand, Robin Burgess.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Xu, Guo.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bertrand, Marianne.

Burgess, Robin.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25389.

NBER working paper series no. w25389

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Social Proximity and Bureaucrat Performance

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.

Summary:

Using exogenous variation in social proximity generated by an allocation rule, we find that bureaucrats assigned to their home states are perceived to be more corrupt and less able to withstand illegitimate political pressure. Despite this, we observe that home officers are more likely to be promoted in the later stages of their careers. To understand this dissonance between performance and promotion we show that incoming Chief Ministers preferentially promote home officers that come from the same home district. Taken together, our results suggest that social proximity hampers bureaucrat performance by facilitating political capture and corruption.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2018.