American Economic Journal:
Economic Policy
ISSN 1945-7731 (Print) | ISSN 1945-774X (Online)
Civil Service Rules and Policy Choices: Evidence from US State Governments
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
vol. 6,
no. 2, May 2014
(pp. 338–80)
Abstract
This paper studies the policy impact of civil service regulations, exploiting reforms undertaken by US state governments throughout the twentieth century. These reforms replaced political patronage with a civil service recruited based on merit and protected from politics. I find that state politicians respond to these changes by spending relatively less through the reformed state-level bureaucracies. Instead, they allocate more funds to lower level governments. The reallocation of expenditures leads to reduced long-term investment by state governments.Citation
Ujhelyi, Gergely. 2014. "Civil Service Rules and Policy Choices: Evidence from US State Governments." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6 (2): 338–80. DOI: 10.1257/pol.6.2.338Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D73 Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
- H72 State and Local Budget and Expenditures
- H77 Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism; Secession
- H79 State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations: Other
There are no comments for this article.
Login to Comment