Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1111/ecot.70017

Publication Title

Economics of Transition and Institutional Change

Volume

Advance online publication

Pages

9 pp.

Abstract

The evolution of institutions in selecting government officials in ancient China reflected efficiency considerations and increased power concentration in the hands of the ruler. Selecting government officials in ancient China became more rule‐based over time, and standardisation and centralisation were some key features of this process. In this dynamic model, a higher volume of transactions, shown as the number of candidates needed to be evaluated, leads to institutionalisation, which has a higher fixed cost but a lower marginal cost in processing each transaction. In the steady state, a ruler with a more encompassing interest chooses a higher level of institutionalisation. The impact of a change in the level of elite power on the level of institutionalisation is sensitive to the relative power of the state versus society.

Rights

© 2025 The Authors

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial an no modifications or adaptations are made.

Comments

Data availability statement: Article states: "The author has nothing to report."

ORCID

0000-0002-1929-3347 (Zhou)

Original Publication Citation

Zhou, H. (2025). Institutionalisation and institutional evolution: A model of selecting government officials in ancient China. Economics of Transition and Institutional Change. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.70017

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