Career paths in hierarchies: Theory and evidence from Chinese officials
研究中国官员在政府层级中的任职时长动态模式，发现不同级别官员的晋升率负相关，并构建动态模型解释这一现象，对理解官僚体系职业发展有参考价值。
This paper studies the dynamic patterns of job durations in a hierarchical government. Using a large dataset of Chinese officials from 1994 to 2017, we find systematic evidence that the promotion rates of officials at different levels of government are negatively correlated, contrary to the common finding of fast track in the literature. To characterize the career paths in hierarchies, we develop a dynamic model of optimal job assignments with symmetric learning. The model highlights the role of seniority in coping with the Type-II error, that is, the risk of over-evaluating an official’s ability. Only very capable officials are spared, and the fast track applies; relatively capable officials are subject to the over-evaluation risk, and their job durations are negatively correlated across levels of government. A negative correlation is also more likely to happen when the controller is more risk averse, which may explain mixed findings in the literature.