Best, Michael Carlos. <br/><br/>
Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness / 
Michael Carlos Best, Jonas Hjort, David Szakonyi. 
 - Cambridge, Mass.  National Bureau of Economic Research  2017. 
 - 1 online resource:  illustrations (black and white); 
 - NBER working paper series  no. w23350 .
 - Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)  no. w23350. .
<br/><br/> April 2017. 
<br/><br/> How important are bureaucrats for the productivity of the state? And to what extent do the tradeoffs between different policies depend on the implementing bureaucrats' effectiveness? Using data on 16million public procurement purchases in Russia during 2011-2016, we show that over 40 percent of the variation in quality-adjusted prices paid--our measure of performance--is due to the individual bureaucrats and organizations that manage procurement processes. Such differences in effectiveness matter for policy design. To illustrate, we show that a common procurement policy-- bid preferences for domestic suppliers--dramatically improves performance, but only when implemented by ineffective bureaucrats. 
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