What Should Musk's Department of Government Efficiency Do?

In this audio recording, I discuss the Knowledge Problem and choice under uncertainty. I address the following issues:

#1 What is the definition of government inefficiency? What does it mean to “waste” $?

#2 How do we know it “when we see it”?

#3 Why does the government inefficiency exist and persist?

#4 If we knew that the policy would prove to be inefficient, then why was it enacted? When did we learn that it was inefficient?

#5 Does the rise of Big Data and Machine Learning help to make government more efficient?

#6 We teach our students that we should do a cost/benefit test of regulations before they are introduced but how do we actually do these? How do we incorporate uncertainty into such an analysis?

#7 If government was less inefficient, would Republicans be bigger fans of government spending?

Here are some of my papers on government inefficiency

Jerch, Rhiannon, Matthew E. Kahn, and Shanjun Li. "The efficiency of local government: The role of privatization and public sector unions." Journal of Public Economics 154 (2017): 95-121.

Kahn, Matthew E. Is Local Public Sector Rent Extraction Higher in Progressive Cities or High Amenity Cities?. No. w23201. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017.

Baum-Snow, Nathaniel, and Matthew E. Kahn. "The effects of new public projects to expand urban rail transit." Journal of Public Economics 77, no. 2 (2000): 241-263.