We study how the management practices bureaucrats operate under correlate with the quantity of public services delivered, using data from the Nigerian Civil Service. We have hand‐coded independent engineering assessments of 4,700 project completion rates. We supplement this with a management survey in the bureaucracies responsible for these projects, building on Bloom and Van Reenen (2013). Management practices matter: increasing bureaucrats’ autonomy is positively associated with completion rates, yet practices related to incentives/monitoring of bureaucrats are negatively associated with completion rates. Our evidence provides new insights on the importance of management in public bureaucracies in a developing country setting.
Authors
CPP Director, IFS Research Director
Imran is Professor of Economics at University College London and Director of the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the IFS.
Research Associate World Bank
Dan is a Research Associate of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and works in the World Bank Development Economics Research Group.
Journal article details
- Publisher
- The IFS
- Issue
- Volume 128, Issue 608, August 2016, pages 413-446
Suggested citation
Rasul, I and Rogger, D. (2016). 'Management of Bureaucrats and Public Service Delivery: Evidence from the Nigerian Civil Service' 128(608/2016), pp.413–446.
More from IFS
Understand this issue
What is the case for carbon taxes in developing countries?
Carbon pricing can be a powerful tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. What are the risks and opportunities from such policies in developing countries?
4 November 2021
The way Chancellors respond to economic news adds to our debt - here's why
1 March 2024
Spring Budget 2024: the Chancellor’s options
Policy analysis
Three ways to improve the design of the UK’s overseas aid spending target
18 January 2024
Distributional analysis of Ghana’s tax system
18 December 2023
FCDO renews TaxDev funding for the next seven years
19 September 2023
Academic research
Evaluating pricing health insurance in lower-income countries: A field experiment in India
14 March 2024
Social proximity and misinformation: Experimental evidence from a mobile phone-based campaign in India
7 December 2023
Public service delivery, exclusion and externalities: Theory and experimental evidence from India
15 November 2023