Suchergebnisse

Because of sorting, more skilled workers are more productive in higher‐type firms. They also learn at different rates about their productivity and therefore expect different wage paths across firms. We show that under strict supermodularity, there is always positive assortative matching: differential learning is always dominated by the impact of productivity. Surprisingly, this holds even if learning is faster in the low‐type firm. The key assumption driving this result is that this is a pure Bayesian learning model. The model provides realistic predictions about wage variance, turnover and the wage distribution that are in line with recent work that estimates the value of learning from co‐workers.

This paper investigates the impact of the abolition of the civil service exam on local governance in early twentieth-century China. Before the abolition, local elites collected surtaxes that financed local public goods, but they were supervised by the state and could lose candidacy for higher status if they engaged in corrupt behavior. This prospect of upward mobility (POUM) gave them incentives to behave well, which the abolition of the exam removed. Using anti-elite protests as a proxy for the deterioration of local governance, we find that prefectures with a higher POUM experienced more incidents of anti-elite protests after the abolition.

Abstract
Motivated by the prevalence of economic targets at all levels of territory administration in China, this article proposes a Tullock contest model to study optimal target setting in a multi-layered tournament-based organisation. In our model, targets are used by upper-level officials to convey the importance of economic growth and incentivise subordinates in the tournaments. Our model predicts a top-down amplification of economic growth targets along the jurisdiction levels, which explains the observed pattern in China. Using both provincial and prefectural-level data, we test the model predictions and find consistent evidence.

AbstractUsing staggered entry of two dockless bike‐sharing firms, we study whether the entrant expands or steals the market from the incumbent in 59 cities. Compared with 23 cities without entry, the entry helps the incumbent to serve more trips, make more bike investment, achieve higher revenue per trip, improve bike utilization, and form a wider and more dispersed network. The market‐expanding effect on new users dominates a significant market‐stealing effect on old users. These findings, plus a theory that highlights consumer search and network effects, suggest that a market with positive network effects and multihoming users is not necessarily winner‐takes‐all.