How Firms, Bureaucrats, and Ministries Benefit from the Revolving Door: Evidence from Japan
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A growing literature finds high returns to firms with legislative connections. Less attention has been paid to returns from bureaucratic connections and to organizations beyond for-profit firms. Using data recording the first postbureaucracy position occupied by all former civil servants in Japan, I reveal a bifurcated job market for former bureaucrats. High-ranking officials from elite economic ministries are more likely to join for-profit firms, where they generate returns such as increased government loans and positive stock market reactions. Lower-ranking officials are more likely to join nonprofits linked to government ministries, which receive higher-value contracts when former bureaucrats are in leadership roles. These patterns suggest that while firms wish to hire bureaucrats who can deliver tangible benefits, ministries also shape revolving door pathways by directing benefits to ensure long-term career value for civil servants. These findings reframe revolving door dynamics as the result of both firm-driven demand and bureaucratic incentives.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".