Essays on the economics of meritocracy
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
This dissertation examines meritocracy in formal and social institutions. The first two chapters study how donors respond to merit and need when giving to families facing unaffordable medical expenses. Chapter One presents the results from observational data from a leading crowdfunding platform in China. I find that campaigns receive more donations if recipients report a higher education level or attendance to more selective colleges. The college rank effect persists even after controlling for content characteristics and donor fixed effects. To further examine donor preference, I conducted an online survey experiment in the second chapter to elicit the willingness of respondents to donate to fundraising vignettes, in which the patients' college and medical expenses are independently randomized. Both academic merit and financial need enhance donor generosity. Female and younger respondents respond more to need and less to merit. The college rank effect is more pronounced for top and in-province institutions and among people with better knowledge of the ranking. Novel textual methods based on large language models are developed to extract information and build measures from fundraising stories efficiently. The third chapter studies the name order effect in political selection in a bureaucratic system. I document that Chinese officials with fewer strokes in their surname are overrepresented in top leadership bodies, because simple surnames appear early in a roster and receive an sizeable advantage. The overrepresentation relative to the population (and social elites) is driven by the 17% simplest surnames. I show that city leaders with simpler surnames have a higher chance of promotion, and the effect increases with the candidate pool size. This effect is attributed to both the formal order of substitution and cognitive biases such as limited attention and misperception among decision-makers. Overall, this dissertation underscores the pivotal role of meritocracy in various aspects of life. It reveals how academic merit can enhance perceived deservingness and attract donations. It also highlights how the seemingly innocuous name order can undermine an evaluation process, potentially affecting the legitimacy of political systems.
Description
2024
License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International