Optimal Assignment of Bureaucrats: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Tax Collectors in the DRC / Augustin Bergeron, Pedro Bessone, John Kabeya Kabeya, Gabriel Z. Tourek, Jonathan L. Weigel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bergeron, Augustin.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bessone, Pedro.

Kabeya Kabeya, John.

Tourek, Gabriel Z.

Weigel, Jonathan L.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w30413.

NBER working paper series no. w30413

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.

Summary:

The assignment of workers to tasks and teams is a key margin of firm productivity and a potential source of state effectiveness. This paper investigates whether a low-capacity state can increase its tax revenue by optimally assigning its tax collectors. We study the two-stage random assignment of property tax collectors into teams and to neighborhoods in a large Congolese city. The optimal assignment involves positive assortative matching on both dimensions: high (low) ability collectors should be paired together, and high (low) ability teams should be paired with high (low) payment propensity households. Positive assortative matching stems from complementarities in collector-to-collector and collector-to-household match types. We provide evidence that these complementarities reflect in part high-ability collectors exerting greater effort when matched with other high-ability collectors. According to our estimates, implementing the optimal assignment would increase tax compliance by 2.94 percentage points and revenue by 26% relative to the status quo (random) assignment. Alternative policies, such as replacing low-ability collectors with new ones of average ability or increasing collectors' performance wages, are likely incapable of achieving a similar revenue increase.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2022.