bachelorThesis
The impact of discretionary hiring on bureaucrats' corruption perceptions, satisfaction, and the mishandling of public resources
Autor
Calderón Amaya, Andrés Yesid
Institución
Resumen
This paper examines the impact in a developing country of adopting a system of selection of civil servants through discretionary and temporary contracts on three aspects of the public sector: corruption perceptions of bureaucrats, job satisfaction, and the mishandling of public resources. I study the impact of a legislative reform that incentivized certain Colombian public agencies to hire personnel using the direct-procurement regime. Relying on a difference-in-differences design, I find a relative increase in the awareness of nepotism, the influence of political networks, and of money and favors in the selection processes of territorial-order entities, which were the most affected by the reform. Civil servants in these agencies also experienced a differential decrease in job satisfaction, and the institutions were more likely to appear in bulletins of sanctions for mishandling of resources. Household data suggests an actual deterioration of meritocracy, and triple difference analyses suggest that perceptions of unfairness in hiring practices might drive the effects on perceptions and satisfaction.