讲座标题：Private Returns to Bureaucratic Appointments: Evidence from Financial Disclosures in India

讲座嘉宾：袁松

讲座时间：2024年11月13日 12:00—13:30（周三）

讲座地点：中国人民大学明德商学楼0208

主持人：陈雨新

讲座简介：

We examine whether bureaucrats with fixed salaries obtain high private returns. We digitize the financial disclosures of elite bureaucrats from India and combine this novel data with web-scraped career histories to estimate the private returns to public servants after bureaucratic reassignments. Employing a difference-in-differences event study approach, we find that the annual growth rate is 10% higher for the value of assets and 4.4% higher for the number of assets after a bureaucrat is transferred to an important ministry with the power to make influential policies. Exploring the underlying mechanism, we document that the results are consistent with an explanation based on the rent-seeking behaviours of bureaucrats. The increase in assets is higher after reassignment to important ministries that are more prone to corruption and is higher in more corruption-prone states. Bureaucrats working in their home states accumulate more immovable assets after the bureaucratic transfers. Previous experience in important ministries continues to contribute to the asset accumulation of bureaucrats. These findings add new insights to the conventional view on the incentives in bureaucracies by showing that bureaucrats may also face high-powered incentives in the form of private returns.

主讲人简介：

袁松，浙江大学经济学院百人计划研究员，2022年从华威大学经济学博士毕业，之前分别于博洛尼亚大学和复旦大学取得硕士和学士学位。主要研究问题关注中国、印度和非洲等发展中国家的发展经济学、政治经济学和经济史。研究成果发表于Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic History等期刊上。

主办单位：中国人民大学经济学院、中国人民大学中国经济史研究中心

承办单位：中国人民大学中国经济史研究中心