The Literary Inquisition: The Persecution of Intellectuals and Human Capital Accumulation in China

Koyama, Mark and Xue, Melanie Meng (2015): The Literary Inquisition: The Persecution of Intellectuals and Human Capital Accumulation in China.

Abstract

Imperial China used an empire-wide system of examinations to select civil servants. Using a semiparametric matching-based difference-in-differences estimator, we show that the persecution of scholar-officials led to a decline in the number of examinees at the provincial and prefectural level. To explore the long-run impact of literary inquisitions we employ a model to show that persecutions could reduce the provision of basic education and have a lasting effect on human capital accumulation. Using the 1982 census we find that literary inquisitions reduced literacy by between 2.25 and 4 percentage points at a prefectural level in the early 20th century. This corresponds to a 69% increase in the probability of an individual being illiterate. Prefectures affected by the literary inquisition had a higher proportion of workers in agriculture until the 1990s.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: China, Human Capital, Institutions, Persecutions, Persistence
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N0 - General; N - Economic History > N4 - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation > N45 - Asia including Middle East; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O15 - Human Resources ; Human Development ; Income Distribution ; Migration

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