Empty Reasons?

Abstract

Norms of reason-giving lay at the foundation of our public institutions, plausibly disciplining officials where more conventional financial and electoral incentives do not apply. Yet do requirements for reason-giving induce public officials to pursue statutory objectives or behave in pro-social ways? Little observational evidence exists on this question. Here, I study a unique natural experiment in federal procurement, in which contracting officials were required to provide public reasons if they awarded certain contracts without competition, but only if the contract was valued above a statutory threshold. Using difference-in-differences and discontinuity designs, I find that the reason-giving requirement substantially increased the probability that contracting officials competed contracts and therefore complied with the principal statutory objective. Secondary results suggest the reasoning requirement reduced the volume of contracts awarded by agencies and changed the composition of firms receiving contracts. These findings speak to complex tradeoffs around public reasoning requirements and their distributional consequences.