Hierarchy and Information

The information that public officials use to make decisions determines the distribution of public resources and the efficacy of public policy. This paper develops a measurement framework for assessing the accuracy of a set of fundamental bureaucratic beliefs and provides experimental evidence on the possibility of' evidence briefings' improving that accuracy. The errors of public officials are large, with 49 percent of officials making errors that are at least 50 percent of objective benchmark data. The provision of briefings reduces these errors by a quarter of a standard deviation, but in line with theoretical predictions, organizational incentives mediate their effectiveness