Date & Time: 2:00-3:00 PM, Friday 28 August

Location: IB 1012

Speaker: Shiyu Bo, Institute for Economic and Social Research (IESR), Jinan University

Abstract

Chinese political discourse groups officials by decade of birth, placing a categorical boundary at January 1970. We ask whether entering the “post-70s generation”—a named, countable, and reportable marker of leadership rejuvenation—creates a discontinuous advantage in promotion. With newly collected career histories of prefectural officials, we estimate a regression discontinuity in birth date. Officials born just inside the category get promoted earlier: they attain bureau-level rank about 2 years earlier than those born just outside. Identification checks show no similar jumps in birth-month density, pre-determined covariates, demographic traits of population or career timing of listed-company executives. The advantage applies to administrative rank rather than more powerful executive appointments such as city mayor or party secretary. Coarse numerical categories thus shape personnel decisions even inside formal organizations that record exact birth dates and evaluate candidates repeatedly, revealing a behavioral factor of Chinese cadre selection beyond performance and patronage.

Bio

Shiyu Bo is a Professor at the Institute for Economic and Social Research (IESR), Jinan University. His primary research fields include urban and regional economics, development economics, and new political economy. He earned his bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Statistics from Peking University in 2011, and his Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2016. His research has been published in academic journals such as the Journal of Development Economics,Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, andJournal of Economic History. He has served as the principal investigator for several grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).