IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/4824.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Multitasking, limited liability and political agency

Author

Listed:
  • Hatfield, John William
  • Padro i Miquel, Gerard

Abstract

This paper considers a political accountability framework in which the politician exerts unobserved e¤ort in two independent dimensions. Since the worst payo¤ to the politician is removal from o¢ ce, this contracting environment exhibits limited liability. We show that limited liability implies that it is di¢ cult to implement vectors that devote attention to both dimensions. Hence citizens must decide between a high e¤ort allocation to a single task or a low total e¤ort allocation split between the two tasks. Given this, we consider why we do not observe more direct elections of separate ministers, which would allow for better balanced allocations of e¤ort. We …nd that if elections are primarily used as devices to weed out low type politicians, a united executive dominates one with divided accountability. These results give support to the view that elections act chie‡y as selection devices.

Suggested Citation

  • Hatfield, John William & Padro i Miquel, Gerard, 2006. "Multitasking, limited liability and political agency," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 4824, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:4824
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/4824/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 1995. "Incumbent Behavior: Vote-Seeking, Tax-Setting, and Yardstick Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 25-45, March.
    2. Patrick Bolton & Mathias Dewatripont, 2005. "Contract Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262025760, December.
    3. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part II: Application to Missions and Accountability of Government Agencies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 199-217.
    4. Alberto Alesina & Guido Tabellini, 2003. "Bureaucrats or Politicians?," Working Papers 238, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    5. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    6. Barnett,William A. & Schofield,Norman & Hinich,Melvin (ed.), 1993. "Political Economy: Institutions, Competition and Representation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521428316, November.
    7. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    8. Baker, George P, 1992. "Incentive Contracts and Performance Measurement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 598-614, June.
    9. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    10. Tim Groseclose & Jeffrey Milyo, 1999. "Buying the Bums Out: What's the Dollar Value of a Seat in Congress?," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 9923, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    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. Gabriele Gratton & Massimo Morelli, 2022. "Optimal Checks And Balances Under Policy Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(2), pages 549-569, May.
    2. Landa, Dimitri & Le Bihan, Patrick, 2015. "Policy Unbundling and Special Interest Politics," IAST Working Papers 15-32, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    3. Fox, Justin & Van Weelden, Richard, 2015. "Hoping for the best, unprepared for the worst," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 59-65.

    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. Luis Garicano & Luis Rayo, 2016. "Why Organizations Fail: Models and Cases," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(1), pages 137-192, March.
    2. Alberto Alesina & Guido Tabellini, 2005. "Why do Politicians Delegate?," Levine's Bibliography 784828000000000470, UCLA Department of Economics.
    3. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    4. David Rietzke & Yu Chen, 2020. "Push or pull? Performance‐pay, incentives, and information," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(1), pages 301-317, March.
    5. le Borgne, E. & Lockwood, B., 2000. "Do Elections Always Motivate Incumbents?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 580, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    6. Hooper, Louise, 2008. "Paying for performance: Uncertainty, asymmetric information and the payment model," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 157-163, January.
    7. Sloof, Randolph & van Praag, C. Mirjam, 2010. "The effect of noise in a performance measure on work motivation: A real effort laboratory experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 751-765, October.
    8. McCausland, David & Pouliakas, Konstantinos & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2005. "Some are Punished and Some are Rewarded: A Study of the Impact of Performance Pay on Job Satisfaction," MPRA Paper 14243, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Dietrichson, Jens, 2013. "Coordination Incentives, Performance Measurement and Resource Allocation in Public Sector Organizations," Working Papers 2013:26, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    10. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2011. "Personnel Economics: Hiring and Incentives," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 20, pages 1769-1823, Elsevier.
    11. Luis Garicano & Richard A. Posner, 2005. "Intelligence Failures: An Organizational Economics Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 151-170, Fall.
    12. Jed De Varo & Suraj Prasad, 2015. "The Relationship between Delegation and Incentives Across Occupations: Evidence and Theory," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(2), pages 279-312, June.
    13. Marchegiani, Lucia & Reggiani, Tommaso G. & Rizzolli, Matteo, 2011. "How Unjust! An Experimental Investigation of Supervisors' Evaluation Errors and Agents' Incentives," IZA Discussion Papers 6254, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Arifovic, Jasmina & Karaivanov, Alexander, 2010. "Learning by doing vs. learning from others in a principal-agent model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 1967-1992, October.
    15. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Alberto Bayo-Moriones & Jose E. Galdon-Sanchez & Sara Martinez-de-Morentin, 2017. "Performance Measurement and Incentive Intensity," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 38(4), pages 496-546, December.
    17. Tomasz Obloj & Metin Sengul, 2020. "What do multiple objectives really mean for performance? Empirical evidence from the French manufacturing sector," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(13), pages 2518-2547, December.
    18. Vukovic, Vuk, 2011. "Political agency model of persistent electoral success with endogenous rents," MPRA Paper 39085, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 25 Jan 2012.
    19. Tomasz Obloj & Peter Zemsky, 2015. "Value creation and value capture under moral hazard: Exploring the micro-foundations of buyer– supplier relationships," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(8), pages 1146-1163, August.
    20. Alberto Alesina & Guido Tabellini, 2003. "Bureaucrats or Politicians?," Working Papers 238, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    21. Besley, Timothy & Smart, Michael, 2007. "Fiscal restraints and voter welfare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3-4), pages 755-773, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law

    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:ehl:lserod:4824. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.