IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/ucsdec/qt0sb0w38d.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bureaucratic Structure and Bureaucratic Performance in Less Developed Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Rauch, James E
  • Evans, Peter B.

Abstract

Recent cross-country empirical analysis has found that privately produced ratings of the performance of the central government bureaucracy in areas such as corruption and red tape are significant predictors of economic performance. We argue that several relatively simple, easily identifiable structural features constitute the key ingredients of effective state bureaucracies and should help to predict these ratings: competitive salaries, internal promotion and career stability, and meritocratic recruitment. We collect a new data set on these features for bureaucracies of 35 less developed countries. Controlling for country income, level of education, and ethnolinguistic diversity, we find that our measures of bureaucratic structure are statistically significant determinants of ratings supplied by two of three country risk agencies. Meritocratic recruitment is the most important structural feature for improving bureaucratic performance, followed by internal promotion and career stability. The importance of competitive salaries could not be clearly established

Suggested Citation

  • Rauch, James E & Evans, Peter B., 1999. "Bureaucratic Structure and Bureaucratic Performance in Less Developed Countries," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt0sb0w38d, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsdec:qt0sb0w38d
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/0sb0w38d.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    2. William Easterly & Ross Levine, 1997. "Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1203-1250.
    3. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong-Wha, 1993. "International comparisons of educational attainment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 363-394, December.
    4. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1995. "Institutions And Economic Performance: Cross‐Country Tests Using Alternative Institutional Measures," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(3), pages 207-227, November.
    5. Robert Summers & Alan Heston, 1991. "The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950–1988," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 327-368.
    6. Levine, Ross & Renelt, David, 1992. "A Sensitivity Analysis of Cross-Country Growth Regressions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 942-963, September.
    7. Feder, Gershon, 1983. "On exports and economic growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1-2), pages 59-73.
    8. Paolo Mauro, 1995. "Corruption and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 681-712.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Tanzi, Vito, 2000. "The role of the State and the quality of the public sector," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), August.
    2. Stéphane Straub, 2000. "Factores determinantes empíricos de las buenas instituciones: ¿sabemos algo a ciencia cierta?," Research Department Publications 4216, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    3. Straub, Stéphane, 2000. "Empirical Determinants of Good Institutions: Do We Know Anything?," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 6085, Inter-American Development Bank.
    4. Julius Kiiza, 2006. "Institutions and Economic Performance in Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Mauritius, Botswana and Uganda," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-73, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. World Bank Group, 2009. "The Philippines : Toward a Better Investment Climate for Growth and Productivity," World Bank Publications - Reports 21559, The World Bank Group.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rauch, James E. & Evans, Peter B., 2000. "Bureaucratic structure and bureaucratic performance in less developed countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 49-71, January.
    2. Englebert, Pierre, 2000. "Solving the Mystery of the AFRICA Dummy," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(10), pages 1821-1835, October.
    3. Jesús Crespo Cuaresma & Gerhard Reitschuler, 2006. "‘Guns Or Butter?’ Revisited: Robustness And Nonlinearity Issues In The Defense–Growth Nexus," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 53(4), pages 523-541, September.
    4. Steven N. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan, 2008. "Empirics of Growth and Development," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Jaime Ros (ed.), International Handbook of Development Economics, Volumes 1 & 2, volume 0, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. de Haan, Jakob & Sturm, Jan-Egbert, 2000. "On the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 215-241, June.
    6. Ross Levine, 1997. "Napoleon, Bourses, and Growth in Latin America," Research Department Publications 4106, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    7. Stéphane Straub, 2000. "Factores determinantes empíricos de las buenas instituciones: ¿sabemos algo a ciencia cierta?," Research Department Publications 4216, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    8. Xavier Sala-I-Martin & Gernot Doppelhofer & Ronald I. Miller, 2004. "Determinants of Long-Term Growth: A Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE) Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 813-835, September.
    9. Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2002. "15 Years of New Growth Economics : What Have we Learnt?," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 5(2), pages 5-15, August.
    10. Diaz-Bautista, Alejandro, 2002. "The role of telecommunications infrastructure and human capital: Mexico´s economic growth and convergence," ERSA conference papers ersa02p102, European Regional Science Association.
    11. Grogan, Louise & Moers, Luc, 2001. "Growth empirics with institutional measures for transition countries," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 323-344, December.
    12. Celal Kucuker, 2003. "Türkiye Ýktisat Kongresi Büyüme Stratejileri Çalýþma Grubu," Working Papers 2003/5, Turkish Economic Association.
    13. Stéphane Straub, 2000. "Empirical Determinants of Good Institutions: Do We Know Anything?," Research Department Publications 4215, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    14. Gimenez, G. & Sanau, J., 2009. "Investment, Human Capital and Institutions: A Multi-equational Approach for the Study of Economic Growth, 1985-2000," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 9(1).
    15. Rock, Michael T. & Bonnett, Heidi, 2004. "The Comparative Politics of Corruption: Accounting for the East Asian Paradox in Empirical Studies of Corruption, Growth and Investment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 999-1017, June.
    16. Ilkhom SHARIPOV, 2016. "ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE EU’S EaP COUNTRIES: DETERMINANTS AND PROSPECTS," EURINT, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 3, pages 169-187.
    17. Arvanitidis, Paschalis & Petrakos, George & Pavleas, Sotiris, 2007. "Determinants of economic growth: the experts’ view," Papers DYNREG20, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    18. Magnus, Jan R. & Powell, Owen & Prüfer, Patricia, 2010. "A comparison of two model averaging techniques with an application to growth empirics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 154(2), pages 139-153, February.
    19. Sevastianova Daria, 2009. "Impact of War on Country per Capita GDP: A Descriptive Analysis," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 114-139, December.
    20. David Dollar & Craig Burnside, 2000. "Aid, Policies, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    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:cdl:ucsdec:qt0sb0w38d. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deucsus.html .

    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.