• Trevor Incerti DPhil Student, Department of Political Science, Yale University, and Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo

• Kenneth McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo

A growing literature finds high returns to firms connected to legislative office. Less attention has been paid to benefits from bureaucratic connections, despite well-documented bureaucratic revolving door hiring practices. Leveraging a 2009 law requiring Japanese bureaucratic agencies to report private sector hires of former civil servants, we construct a comprehensive dataset of all revolving door hires in Japan. Using this dataset and data on Japanese government contracts and loans, we test for systematic benefits that accrue to firms who hire former bureaucrats. Specifically, we hypothesize that bureaucratic rehiring will be associated with an increased likelihood of receipt of government contracts, government loans, and reputation boosts.

Trevor Incerti is a PhD Candidate at Yale University studying comparative political economy. Currently, he is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo Institute of Social Science and a Research Associate at the Waseda University Institute of Political Economy.

His research focuses on the ways individuals, businesses, and interest groups use politics for private gain. Examples include corruption and regulatory capture. He is also interested in the use of data science tools and methods of causal inference in political economy research. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review and British Journal of Political Science, among other outlets.

Prior to Yale, he worked as a Data Scientist for TrueCar, Inc., where he developed forecasting models to predict automotive residual values and sales volumes in the US and Canada. Before that, he analyzed regulatory matters that raised risks of antitrust violations as an economic consultant at Compass Lexecon.