bq. We might think that if deadlines don’t accelerate decisions, at least they make it clearer when a decision will be made. Yet a study I co-authored with Stanford political scientist Justin Grimmer shows that sometimes the opposite can occur. Once a decision-maker misses a deadline — and many, many deadlines are not only missed, but are expected to be missed — there is usually much less incentive to continue speedy work.
That is Dan Carpenter, in the Washington Post, talking about the debt ceiling “deadline” of August 2. The study he mentions is here (pdf).