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6 mai 2021
- 2105.02457
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Economics - Theoretical EconomicsSujets proches
Economic theory Political economyCiter ce document
Inácio Bó et al., « Designing Heaven's Will: The job assignment in the Chinese imperial civil service », arXiv - économie
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Résumé
We provide an original analysis of historical documents to describe the assignment procedures used to allocate entry-level civil service jobs in China from the tenth to the early twentieth century. The procedures tried to take different objectives into account through trial and error. By constructing a formal model that combines these procedures into a common framework, we compare their effectiveness in minimizing unfilled jobs and prioritizing high-level posts. We show that the problem was inherently complex such that changes made to improve the outcome could have the opposite effect. Based on a small modification of the last procedure used, we provide a new mechanism for producing maximum matchings under constraints in a transparent and public way.