Short Summary This article proposes that defense procurement officers rationally over-invest in observable compliance documentation at the expense of unobservable system welfare, creating a 'Missing System Theorem.' The authors test this mechanism using a falsifiable prediction: contracts over $10M in process-weighted evaluation regimes should have documentation cost ratios at least 0.15, compared to at most 0.05 in outcome-weighted regimes. The study uses archival data from FPDS, IG reports, and OPM to estimate these ratios.
Procurement officers will invest all their time in compliance paperwork and none in actually improving outcomes, because their performance evaluations only reward compliance, not results. Contributes a behavioral microfoundation for 'paper compliance' in defense procurement, linking officer incentives to cost overruns.
Source: clean manuscript record
Contributes a behavioral microfoundation for 'paper compliance' in defense procurement, linking officer incentives to cost overruns. The contribution is a testable hypothesis and empirical design, not a completed study. Scholarly contribution is moderate.
Procurement officers will invest all their time in compliance paperwork and none in actually improving outcomes, because their performance evaluations only reward compliance, not results.
Contributes a behavioral microfoundation for 'paper compliance' in defense procurement, linking officer incentives to cost overruns. The contribution is a testable hypothesis and empirical design, not a completed study. Scholarly contribution is moderate.
Procurement officers will invest all their time in compliance paperwork and none in actually improving outcomes, because their performance evaluations only reward compliance, not results. Contributes a behavioral microfoundation for 'paper compliance' in defense procurement, linking officer incentives to cost overruns.
Contributes a behavioral microfoundation for 'paper compliance' in defense procurement, linking officer incentives to cost overruns. The contribution is a testable hypothesis and empirical design, not a completed study. Scholarly contribution is moderate.
What’s new: The application of the Missing System Theorem to defense procurement is novel, but the theoretical mechanism is directly transferred from Postnieks (2019) without extension. The empirical design is standard and the results are illustrative. Originality is moderate.
policy implications, suggesting that procurement reform should focus on restructuring officer incentives to include welfare metrics rather than simply simplifying compliance procedures. Theorem Plain Procurement officers will invest all their time in compliance paperwork and none in actually improving outcomes, because their performance evaluations only reward compliance, not results.
A counterexample would show the paper’s mechanism failing on its own premises, or show its evidence does not support the stated result.
Procurement officers will invest all their time in compliance paperwork and none in actually improving outcomes, because their performance evaluations only reward compliance, not results. Contributes a behavioral microfoundation for 'paper compliance' in defense procurement, linking officer incentives to cost overruns.
Contributes a behavioral microfoundation for 'paper compliance' in defense procurement, linking officer incentives to cost overruns. The contribution is a testable hypothesis and empirical design, not a completed study. Scholarly contribution is moderate.
Its distinctiveness claim is the behavioral test and falsifiable prediction, but the core idea is already present in peer items.
The Paper Shield in Defense Procurement: A Behavioral Test of the Missing System Theorem