2004) ”Bureaucrats or Politicians

Policies are typically chosen by politicians and bureaucrats. This paper investigates the normative criteria with which to al-locate policy tasks to elected policymakers (politicians) or non elected bureaucrats. Politicians are preferable if ability is less important than effort or there is little uncertainty about whether the policymakers has the required abilities; if there is uncertainty about social preferences and flexibility is valuable; if time incon-sistency is not an issue; if vested interests do not have large stakes in the policy outcome; if policy complementarities and compen-sation of losers is important