Topic：Influence Activities and Bureaucratic Performance: Experimental Evidence from China
Speaker： He Guojun, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Time：13:30-14:45
Date: April 12, 2019
Venue: 106B, Zhonghui Building

Introduction to speaker：
Guojun He is an assistant professor in Social Science, Environment and Sustainability, and Economics at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He is a faculty affiliate of HKUST's Institute for Emerging Market Studies and Institute for Public Policy. He holds concurrent appointment at University of Chicago and serves as the research director of the Energy Policy Institute in China.
Abstract：
Subjective performance evaluation is widely used by firms and governments to provide work incentives. However, delegating evaluation power to senior leadership could cause influence activities: agents might devote much efforts to please their supervisors, rather than focusing on productive tasks that benefit their organizations. In this paper, we conduct a large-scale randomized field experiment among Chinese grassroots civil servants and provide the first quantitative evidence on the existence and implications of influence activities. We find that introducing uncertainty in the identity of the evaluator, which discourages evaluator-specific influence activities, can significantly improve the performance of state employees.