Redressing Regional Inequality through Institutional Change: Evidence from the Civil Examination Reform in the Ming Dynasty

• In Event: Historical Political Economy of China

Brief Overview

This study uses the Ming Dynasty’s exam quota reform as a natural experiment to show how state-designed compensatory policies mitigated regional inequality and promoted state-building via elite cooptation.

Authors

• Yanlan Shen, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

• Zheng Su, Shanghai Jiao Tong University