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arXiv · 2105.02457

Designing Heaven's Will: The job assignment in the Chinese imperial civil service

Inácio Bó·Li Chen
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Abstract

We provide an original analysis of historical documents to describe the assignment procedures used to allocate entry-level civil service jobs in China from the tenth to the early twentieth century.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.

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Inácio Bó, Li Chen. 2021-05-06. Designing Heaven's Will: The job assignment in the Chinese imperial civil service. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2026.03.013

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