Topic: Social Ties and the Selection of China’s Political Elite

Speaker: Raymond Fisman, Slater Family Professor in Behavioral Economics, Boston University

Date: May 22, 2019 (Wednesday) 

Time: 10:00am-11:30am 

Location: 4-102, Building 4

Language: English 

Abstract: 

We study how sharing a hometown or college connection with an incumbent member of China’s Politburo affects a candidate’s likelihood of selection as a new member. In specifications that include fixed effects to absorb quality differences across cities and colleges, we find that hometown and college connections are each associated with 5-9 percentage point reductions in selection probability. This “connections penalty” is equally strong for retiring Politburo members, arguing against quota-based explanations, and it is much stronger for junior Politburo members, consistent with a role for intra-factional competition. We show that our findings differ sharply from earlier work both because for our more rigorous empirical specification as well as our emphasis on shared hometown and college – rather than shared workplace – connections. 

About the speaker: 

Ray Fisman holds the Slater Family Chair in Behavioral Economics at Boston University. Previously, he was the Lambert family professor of Social Enterprise and co-director of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia University's business school. Professor Fisman's research – focused on various aspects of political economy and behavioral economics – has been published in leading economics journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics. His most recent book, Corruption: What Everyone Needs to Know (with political scientist Miriam Golden), was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.