Audits and Government Hiring Practices

Abstract

We exploit the random assignment of Brazilian municipalities to an audit programme to explore the link between audits and government hiring practices. We find that audited municipalities employ less labour to provide a given level of public services, and change the way in which they screen their employeesrelying less on discretion and more on merit. Given that audits reduce corruption in the activities under scrutiny, our results suggest that different types of corruption can be complements rather than substitutes.

Drought‐Reliefs and Partisanship

“…Politicians often act based on political considerations that have little to do with welfare (Ferraz and Finan, 2011; Curto‐Grau and Zudenkova, 2018; Tarquinio, 2020; Bonilla‐Mejía and Morales, 2021; Finan and Mazzocco, 2021; Lauletta, Rossi, and Ruzzier, 2022). Particularly, in federal countries, the upper level of government disproportionally allocates funds to co‐partisan local officers (Khemani, 2007; Arulampalam et al ., 2009; Brollo and Nannicini, 2012; Bracco et al ., 2015; Curto‐Grau, Solé‐Ollé, and Sorribas‐Navarro, 2018).…”