There is an empirical revolution underway in our understanding of the public sector. More data is available on public officials, and what makes public organizations work, than ever before. In this Policy Research Talk, World Bank economist Daniel Rogger will discuss how novel data, frequently collected by the World Bank's Bureaucracy Lab that he co-founded, is changing our understanding of the way government functions and how we might make it work better. The talk will assess new evidence on how the incentives of bureaucrats deviate from the classical concept of the economic agent, and sketch some of the frontiers of research and policy in this area. It will also touch on what this means for the relationship between policy and research in the Bank.
