To what extent does a more competent public bureaucracy contribute to better economic outcomes? We address this question in the context of the US federal procurement of services and works, by combining contract-level data on procurement performance and bureau-level data on competence and workforce characteristics. We use the death occurrences of specific types of employees as instruments and find that an increase in bureau competence causes a significant and economically important reduction in (a) time delays, (b) cost overruns, and (c) number of renegotiations. Cooperation within the office appears to be a key driver of the findings. (JEL D73, H11, H57, L26).

中文翻译：

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官僚能力和采购成果

更有能力的公共官僚机构在多大程度上有助于取得更好的经济成果？我们在美国联邦服务和工程的采购中解决了这个问题，方法是将合同级别的采购绩效数据与局级的能力和劳动力特征数据相结合。我们使用特定类型员工的死亡事件作为工具，发现提高局的能力会导致（a）延误，（b）成本超支和（c）重新谈判的数量大大减少，并且在经济上很重要。办公室内部的合作似乎是调查结果的主要推动力。（JEL D73，H11，H57，L26）。