IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxecpp/v66y2014i2p443-464..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Governance, bureaucratic rents, and well-being differentials across US states

Author

Listed:
  • Simon Luechinger
  • Mark Schelker
  • Alois Stutzer

Abstract

We analyse the influence of institutional restrictions on bureaucratic rents. As a measure for these rents, we propose subjective well-being differentials between workers in the public administration and workers in other industries. Based on data for the US states, we estimate the extent to which institutional efforts to strengthen bureaucratic accountability affect differences in well-being. We find that well-being differences are smaller in states with high transparency, elected auditors, and legal deficit carryover restrictions. These findings are consistent with limited rent extraction under these institutional conditions. No or weak effects are found for performance audits and regulatory review.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Luechinger & Mark Schelker & Alois Stutzer, 2014. "Governance, bureaucratic rents, and well-being differentials across US states," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(2), pages 443-464.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:66:y:2014:i:2:p:443-464.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpt006
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sequeira, Tiago & Minas, Tiago & Ferreira-Lopes, Alexandra, 2014. "Do Large Governments Decrease Happiness?," MPRA Paper 54418, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Bruno Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2017. "Public Choice and Happiness," CREMA Working Paper Series 2017-03, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    3. Mark Schelker, 2016. "Unabhängige Finanzkontrolle in der Demokratie," CREMA Working Paper Series 2016-06, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    4. Björn Kauder & Manuela Krause & Niklas Potrafke, 2018. "Electoral cycles in MPs’ salaries: evidence from the German states," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(4), pages 981-1000, August.
    5. Mavisakalyan, Astghik & Otrachshenko, Vladimir & Popova, Olga, 2021. "Can bribery buy health? Evidence from post-communist countries," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 991-1007.
    6. Lin, Yi-Chen & Hwang, Ruey-Ching & Deng, Wen-Shuenn, 2015. "Heterogeneity in the relationship between subjective well-being and its determinants over the life cycle: A varying-coefficient ordered probit approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 372-386.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:66:y:2014:i:2:p:443-464.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.