Political accountability and bureaucratic selection
利用巴西公共部门雇员的随机审计和个人层面数据，研究发现反腐败审计通过增强政治问责、加强招聘努力和减少庇护主义，提升了官僚机构的质量和人员技能与任务的匹配度。
The selection of public sector employees is crucial to state effectiveness. Given politicians’ influence on bureaucracies, could political accountability improve bureaucratic selection? Using randomized audits and individual-level data on Brazil’s public sector employees, this paper finds that audits enhance the quality of the bureaucracy. The results are driven by politicians’ increased incentives to perform well in office, stronger recruitment efforts, and a reduction in patronage. • Anti-corruption audits improve the quality of the match between public sector employees’ skills and tasks. • Effects seem to be driven by increases in political accountability, recruitment effort, and a reduction in patronage. • Transparency can enhance state capacity not only by reducing corruption, but also by improving the bureaucracy.