THE CONCEPT OF ADMINISTRATIVE ELASTICITY

ABSTRACT

The concept of administrative elasticity draws a relation between the development of administrative costs for a particular program and the development of this program's monetary volume. For the administration of agricultural export subsidies in Germany, administrative elasticities of the two offices involved were estimated separately and as a total. It showed that elasticities over a five-year period provided more reliable information than a look on short-term developments. Overall, export subsidies showed an inverse administrative elasticity, i.e., administrative costs soared while the program's monetary volume shrank. Explanations for this phenomenon were given and chances and limits of the concept of administrative elasticities were discussed.