American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
From Weber to Kafka: Political Instability and the Overproduction of Laws
American Economic Review
vol. 111,
no. 9, September 2021
(pp. 2964–3003)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
With inefficient bureaucratic institutions, the effects of laws are hard to assess and incompetent politicians may pass laws to build a reputation as skillful reformers. Since too many laws curtail bureaucratic efficiency, this mechanism can generate a steady state with Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Temporary surges in political instability heighten the incentives to overproduce laws and can shift the economy towards the Kafkaesque state. Consistent with the theory, after a surge in political instability in the early 1990s, Italy experienced a significant increase in the amount of poor-quality legislation and a decrease in bureaucratic efficiency.Citation
Gratton, Gabriele, Luigi Guiso, Claudio Michelacci, and Massimo Morelli. 2021. "From Weber to Kafka: Political Instability and the Overproduction of Laws." American Economic Review 111 (9): 2964–3003. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20190672Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- D73 Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption