To elect or to appoint? Bias, information, and responsiveness of bureaucrats and politicians

In this paper, we address empirically the trade-offs involved in choosing between bureaucrats and politicians. In order to do this, we map institutions of selection and retention of public officials to the type of public officials they induce. We do this by specifying a collective decision-making model, and exploiting its equilibrium information to obtain estimates of the unobservable types. We focus on criminal decisions across US states' Supreme Courts. We find that justices that are shielded from voters' influence (“bureaucrats”) on average (i) have better information, (ii) are more likely to change their preconceived opinions about a case, and (iii) are more effective (make less mistakes) than their elected counterparts (“politicians”). We evaluate how performance would change if the courts replaced majority rule with unanimity rule.

► Do non-elected public officials (bureaucrats) make better decisions than politicians?
► We study decisions in criminal cases in state Supreme Courts, which vary in selection methods.
► We estimate a structural model of equilibrium voting with private information.
► We allow judges' bias and quality of information to vary with case and judges' characteristics.
► Elected judges are more responsive to voters, have worse information and make more mistakes.