Designing Heaven's will: The job assignment in the Chinese imperial civil service

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bo, Inacio; Chen, Li
• 署名单位: University of Macau; Tongji University; University of Gothenburg
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2026.03.013
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: labor-market; patronage; CHOICE

摘要

We study the evolution of entry-level civil service job assignment in imperial China from the tenth to the early twentieth century. The procedures were sequential, irrevocable, and publicly verifiable, relying increasingly on lots-drawing and operating under constraints that limited which posts candidates could fill and where they could be posted. Using a unified matching framework, we compare procedures by their ability to maximize the number of filled posts and to assign higher-ranked jobs to higher-degree candidates. We show that reforms intended to improve these outcomes can instead reverse them once constraints interact, a failure driven by greedy sequential matching. Building on the structure of the final historical procedure, we describe minimal extensions of public lots-drawing mechanisms that guarantee maximum matchings under compatibility constraints.