Political responsiveness and transparency in defense policymaking
构建政治代理模型，分析政策制定者声誉关切与透明度对国防政策选择的影响，发现透明度对公民福利有正反双重效应。
We develop a political agency model, which takes into account the asymmetry in information revelation across policy outcomes, and explore how the policymaker’s reputational concerns and transparency in actions influence her defense policy choice and its consequences. We demonstrate that the policymaker’s reputational concerns may have perverse effects as her fear of losing reputation by failing to deter a threat or her incentive to posture may lead her to enact defense policies that are suboptimal for citizens. We also find that policy transparency has mixed effects on citizens’ welfare: whereas transparency makes the incompetent policymaker less inclined to overallocate resources to national defense and reduces inefficient arms buildups (the positive effect), it also prompts her to choose insufficient military preparedness and increases the risk of deterrence failure (the negative effect). Our results suggest that when the policymaker has access to sufficiently accurate information, enhancing policy transparency may improve the welfare of citizens.