 Career paths in hierarchies: Theory and evidence from Chinese officialsJinghong Li, Zanhui Liu and Yang Yao Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 234, issue C Abstract: This paper studies the dynamic patterns of job durations in a hierarchical government. Using a large dataset of Chinese officials from 1994 to 2017, we find systematic evidence that the promotion rates of officials at different levels of government are negatively correlated, contrary to the common finding of fast track in the literature. To characterize the career paths in hierarchies, we develop a dynamic model of optimal job assignments with symmetric learning. The model highlights the role of seniority in coping with the Type-II error, that is, the risk of over-evaluating an official’s ability. Only very capable officials are spared, and the fast track applies; relatively capable officials are subject to the over-evaluation risk, and their job durations are negatively correlated across levels of government. A negative correlation is also more likely to happen when the controller is more risk averse, which may explain mixed findings in the literature. Keywords: Career paths; Fast track; Seniority; Meritocracy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:234:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125001465 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107027 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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