Long Live Keju! The Persistent Effects of China’s Civil Examination System

By Ting Chen, James Kai Sing Kung, Chicheng Ma. Economic Journal, 2020

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China's civil examination system (keju), an incredibly long-lived institution, has a persistent impact on human capital outcomes today. Using the variation in the density of jinshi—the highest qualification—across 278 Chinese prefectures in the Ming-Qing period (c. 1368–1905) to proxy for this effect, we find that a doubling of jinshi per 10,000 population leads to an 8.5% increase in years of schooling in 2010. The persistent effect of keju can be attributed to a multitude of channels including cultural transmission, educational infrastructure, social capital and, to a lesser extent, political elites.

Subfields: Demography, Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/37e757f079710b30d2af7f23a9eef282a939ca5a