Bureaucrat Allocation in the Public Sector: Evidence from the World Bank

Abstract

The allocation of bureaucrats across tasks constitutes a pivotal instrument for achieving an organisation’s objectives. In this paper, I measure the performance of World Bank bureaucrats by combining the universe of task assignment with an evaluation of task outcome and bureaucrat CVs. I introduce two stylised facts. First, bureaucrat performance correlates with task features and individual characteristics. Second, there exists a negative assortative matching between high-performing bureaucrats and low-performing countries. In response to natural disasters, which may further weaken countries’ performance, I observe that low-performing countries receive an additional allocation of high-performing bureaucrats. I discuss various interpretations of these findings.