Guo Xu (Alesina Seminar)

See the seminar's full schedule here: Alberto Alesina Seminar on Political Economy

Today's Speaker

Guo Xu (Berkeley), "Strengthening State Capacity: Civil Service Reform and Public Sector Performance during the Gilded Age"

Abstract

We use newly digitized records from the Post Office to study the effects of strengthened state capacity between 1875-1901. Exploiting the implementation of the Pendleton Act—a landmark statute which shielded bureaucrats from political interference—across U.S. cities over two waves, we find that civil service reform reduced postal delivery errors and increased productivity. These improvements were most pronounced during election years when the reform dampened bureaucratic turnover. We provide suggestive evidence that reformed cities witnessed declining local partisan newspapers. Separating politics from administration, therefore, not only improved state effectiveness but also weakened the role of local politics.

Co-sponsored by FAS and IQSS, the Alberto Alesina Seminar on Political Economy supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies.

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See the seminar's full schedule at the Alesina Seminar page.

All interested faculty and students are invited to attend.