Designing Heaven's Will: The job assignment in the Chinese imperial civil service
Abstrak
We provide an original analysis of historical documents to describe the assignment procedures used to allocate entry-level civil service jobs in China from the tenth to the early twentieth century. The procedures tried to take different objectives into account through trial and error. By constructing a formal model that combines these procedures into a common framework, we compare their effectiveness in minimizing unfilled jobs and prioritizing high-level posts. We show that the problem was inherently complex such that changes made to improve the outcome could have the opposite effect. Based on a small modification of the last procedure used, we provide a new mechanism for producing maximum matchings under constraints in a transparent and public way.
Topik & Kata Kunci
Penulis (2)
Inácio Bó
Li Chen
Akses Cepat
- Tahun Terbit
- 2021
- Bahasa
- en
- Sumber Database
- arXiv
- Akses
- Open Access ✓