Land equalisation, social mobility, and the rise of the Civil Service exam system

Hanhui Guan () and Qian Dai ()
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Hanhui Guan: Peking University
Qian Dai: Wuhan University

No 15020, Working Papers from Economic History Society

Abstract: "The Civil Service Exam System in Imperial China, which is the earliest Official Selection System in the world, and also is foundation of the Civil Servant System of western countries, appeared in replace of the Hereditary System in Tang Dynasty (618-907). This paper seeks for the economic driving force behind this political institutions transformation. We find that the implementation of Land Equalization policy could explain why the rise of Civil Service Exam System happened in Tang China. The long-term enforcement of Land Equalization policy impaired economic base of aristocrat groups as well as their monopoly political power; therefore, social structure became more horizontal than in the aristocrat and hereditary system. For this reason, the aristocrat groups had to share political power with elites selected from the populace by means of examination, which induced the rise of Civil Service Exam System. Probit regression using a newly-constructed dataset from first-hand biographies provided solid empirical evidence for our conjectures, and IV estimation verifies that the relationship is causal. Our finding suggests that only if economic factor changed social structure thoroughly, it could lead to momentous political institution transition."

Keywords: Bureaucracy; the Civil Service Exam System; Land Equalization; the Hereditary System (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 H19 N15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-03
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