Social Ties and Favoritism in Chinese Science

Raymond Fisman, Jing Shi, Yongxiang Wang and Rong Xu

Journal of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 126, issue 3, 1134 - 1171

Abstract: We study favoritism via hometown ties, a common source of favor exchange in China, in fellow selection of the Chinese Academies of Sciences and Engineering. Hometown ties to fellow selection committee members increase candidates’ election probability by 39 percent, coming entirely from the selection stage involving an in-person meeting. Elected hometown-connected candidates are half as likely to have a high-impact publication as elected fellows without connections. CAS/CAE membership increases the probability of university leadership appointments and is associated with a US$9.5 million increase in annual funding for fellows’ institutions, indicating that hometown favoritism has potentially large effects on resource allocation.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (65)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/697086 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/697086 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Ties and Favoritism in Chinese Science (2017)
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:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/697086

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().