Judging a book by its Cover: The influence of physical attractiveness on the promotion of regional leaders

Leng Ling, Danglun Luo and Guoman She

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2019, vol. 158, issue C, 1-14

Abstract: We investigate the determinants of the promotion of Chinese municipal leaders and find that leaders with greater perceived attractiveness have a higher probability of promotion. Further exploration shows no correlation between a leader's facial traits and local economic growth under his jurisdiction. Essentially, a senior government official's look significantly affects his chance of promotion but says very little about his ability to advance the local economy. Our findings suggest that appearance-based discrimination exists when Chinese political hierarchy screens political elites.

Keywords: Discrimination; Political turnover; Economic performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 H11 J71 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726811930006X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:158:y:2019:i:c:p:1-14

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2019.01.005

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
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().