Bureaucracy intermediaries, corruption and red tape
研究了发展中国家常见的官僚中介如何影响个人获取政府许可证的收益，发现中介虽能改善准入，但会强化官僚制造繁文缛节的动机，导致整体福利下降。
Intermediaries that assist individuals and firms with the government bureaucracy are common in developing countries. Although such bureaucracy intermediaries are, anecdotally, linked with corruption and welfare losses, few formal analyses exist. We introduce a model in which a government license can benefit individuals. We study the net license gain when individuals get the license through the regular licensing procedure, through bribing or through intermediaries. For a given procedure, individuals using intermediaries are better off than if intermediaries and corruption had not existed. Then, we study the incentives of corrupt bureaucrats to create red tape. Bureaucrats implement more red tape and individuals are unambiguously worse off in a setting with intermediaries than with direct corruption only. Intermediaries can thus improve access to the bureaucracy, but also strengthen the incentives to create red tape – a potential explanation why licensing procedures tend to be long in developing countries.