Organization of the State: Home Assignment and Bureaucrat Performance

Abstract

Abstract How to allocate personnel is a central question in the organization of the state. We link survey data on the performance of 1471 elite civil servants in India to their personnel records between 1975 and 2005 to study how home allocations affect their performance and careers. Using exogenous variation in home assignment generated by an allocation rule, we find that bureaucrats assigned to their home states are perceived to be less effective and more likely to be suspended. These negative effects are driven by states with higher levels of corruption and cohorts with greater numbers of home state officers. (JEL: J45, O43, D73, M5)