The Limits of Meritocracy: Screening Bureaucrats Under Imperfect Verifiability

Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato, Xiao Yu Wang and Shuang Zhang

No 21963, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Does bureaucratic ability predict promotion in governments? We show that self-reported performance in enforcing the One Child Policy predicts mayoral promotion in China. However, misreporting handicaps screening—a non-manipulated performance measure does not predict promotion. We show that this is consistent with a model where a government has a meritocratic objective but underestimates the imperfect verifiability of performance, rather than a model where a government is only interested in the illusion of meritocracy. Thus, despite meritocratic intentions, we challenge the notion that a successful promotion system effectively substituted for democratic institutions in explaining Chinese growth.

JEL-codes: D23 D73 D86 M12 M51 O12 O15 O53 P23 P26 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-tra
Note: DEV LS PE POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published as Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato & Xiao Yu Wang & Shuang Zhang, 2019. "The limits of meritocracy: Screening bureaucrats under imperfect verifiability," Journal of Development Economics, .

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