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Full-Text Articles in Law
Elections, Ideology, And Turnover In The U.S. Federal Government, Alexander D. Bolton, John De Figueiredo, David E. Lewis
Elections, Ideology, And Turnover In The U.S. Federal Government, Alexander D. Bolton, John De Figueiredo, David E. Lewis
Faculty Scholarship
A defining feature of public sector employment is the regular change in elected leadership. Yet, we know little about how elections influence public sector careers. We describe how elections alter policy outputs and disrupt the influence of civil servants over agency decisions. These changes shape the career choices of employees motivated by policy, influence, and wages. Using new Office of Personnel Management data on the careers of millions of federal employees between 1988 and 2011, we evaluate how elections influence employee turnover decisions. We find that presidential elections increase departure rates of career senior employees, particularly in agencies with divergent …
Years Of Good Life Based On Income And Health: Re-Engineering Cost-Benefit Analysis To Examine Policy Impact On Wellbeing And Distributive Justice, Richard Cookson, Owen Cotton-Barrett, Matthew D. Adler, Miqdad Asaria, Toby Ord
Years Of Good Life Based On Income And Health: Re-Engineering Cost-Benefit Analysis To Examine Policy Impact On Wellbeing And Distributive Justice, Richard Cookson, Owen Cotton-Barrett, Matthew D. Adler, Miqdad Asaria, Toby Ord
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Public Sector Personnel Economics: Wages, Promotions, And The Competence-Control Trade-Off, Charles M. Cameron, John De Figueiredo, David E. Lewis
Public Sector Personnel Economics: Wages, Promotions, And The Competence-Control Trade-Off, Charles M. Cameron, John De Figueiredo, David E. Lewis
Faculty Scholarship
We model personnel policies in public agencies, examining how wages and promotion standards can partially offset a fundamental contracting problem: the inability of public sector workers to contract on performance, and the inability of political masters to contract on forbearance from meddling. Despite the dual contracting problem, properly constructed personnel policies can encourage intrinsically motivated public sector employees to invest in expertise, seek promotion, remain in the public sector, and develop policy projects. However, doing so requires internal personnel policies that sort "slackers" from "zealots." Personnel policies that accomplish this task are quite different in agencies where acquired expertise has …