Governmental Failures in Evaluating Programs
Abstract
Consider a government that adopts a program, sees a noisy signal about its success, and decides whether to continue the program. Suppose further that the success of a program is greater if people think it will be continued. This paper considers the optimal decision rule for continuing the program, both when government can and cannot commit. We find that welfare can be higher when information is poor, that government should at times commit to continuing a program it believes had failed, and that a government which fears losing power may acquire either too much or too little information.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by University of California Transportation Center in its series University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers with number qt4jd2q25f.Length:
Date of creation: 01 Jan 1994
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cdl:uctcwp:qt4jd2q25f
Contact details of provider:
Postal: 109 McLaughlin Hall, Mail Code 1720, Berkeley, CA 94720-1720
Phone: 510-642-3585
Fax: 510-643-3955
Email:
Web page: http://www.escholarship.org/repec/uctc/
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: Urban Studies and Planning;References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Tabellini, Guido & Alesina, Alberto, 1990.
"Voting on the Budget Deficit,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 37-49, March.
- Alesina, Alberto F & Tabellini, Guido, 1988. "Voting on the Budget Deficit," CEPR Discussion Papers 269, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- Guido Tabellini & Alberto Alesina, 1988. "Voting on the Budget Deficit," UCLA Economics Working Papers 539, UCLA Department of Economics.
- Alberto Alesina & Guido Tabellini, 1988. "Voting on the Budget Deficit," NBER Working Papers 2759, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Robert J. Barro & David B. Gordon, 1983.
"A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural-Rate Model,"
NBER Working Papers
0807, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Barro, Robert J & Gordon, David B, 1983. "A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural Rate Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 589-610, August.
- Glazer, Amihai, 1989. "Politics and the Choice of Durability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1207-13, December.
- Tabellini, Guido & Alesina, Alberto, 1990. "Voting on the Budget Deficit," Scholarly Articles 4553030, Harvard University Department of Economics.
- Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-91, June.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:uctcwp:qt4jd2q25fFor technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Lisa Schiff).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

