Why Are Modern Bureaucracies Special? State Support to Private Firms in Early Eighteenth-Century France
研究了18世纪早期法国商业局如何通过层级分工与同僚审议分配权利和租金，发现其决策过程能实现非人格化、理性且信息充分的决策，即使是在寻租国家中。
The Bureau du Commerce allocated rights and rents to private entrepreneurs via a mix of hierarchical division of labor and peer-based collegial deliberation. This set-up reflected an attempt to maximize information and expertise, but also allowed for the recognition of private rights and social interests. The final decisions of the Bureau (for or against each demand), and the qualitative arguments brought forward during the procedure, are robust predictors of eventual decisions. We see this result as an indication that impersonal, rational and informed decision-making could be obtained even within a patrimonialist, rent-seeking State.