NBER Working Papers · 2026 · Esther Duflo、Rema Hanna、Benjamin A. Olken、Shreya Tandon
中文摘要
外包理论通常假定，私人企业能够更有效率地生产商品和提供服务，但缔约摩擦意味着企业不会将政府的目标函数内部化。然而，对于某些任务，政府实际上是否可能具有更高的生产效率？我们通过印度金奈的一项实验研究这一问题。在该实验中，政府随机选取若干社区，由政府签约的私人企业而非政府税务稽查员确定房产税评估额。我们发现，政府税务稽查员开展的稽查所带来的税收收入增幅几乎是私人企业稽查的两倍。将新的评估结果与我们聘请的第三方调查人员所作的独立评估进行比较可知，政府税务稽查员的评估也更为准确。与政府签约面临的困难使许多有能力的企业放弃投标。或许正因如此，政府稽查员比私人企业的工作人员技能更高，投入的努力也更多。重要的是，政府稽查员还拥有更大的入户权限，而即便是更高质量的企业，这种权限也可能难以向其转移。研究结果表明，政府外包的局限可能并不止于多任务问题。
Abstract
Theories of outsourcing often presume that private firms are more efficient producers of goods and services, but that contracting frictions mean that firms do not internalize the government's objective function. But perhaps, for some tasks, the government can actually be more productively efficient? We study this question through an experiment in Chennai, India, where the government randomly selected neighborhoods to have property tax assessments determined by private firms contracted by the government, rather than government tax inspectors. We show that inspections by government tax inspectors yielded almost double the increase in tax revenue as those done by private firms. They were also more accurate, as judged by comparing new assessments to independent assessments done by third-party surveyors we hired. Difficulties contracting with the government discouraged many competent firms from bidding. Perhaps as a result, government inspectors had higher skills and put in more effort than the workers at the private firms. Importantly, the government inspectors also had more authority to enter properties, which may be hard to transfer even to higher quality firms. The results suggest that the limits to government outsourcing may go beyond multitasking issues.