Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Long-run Effects of Repeated School Admission Reforms

Author:

Chiaki Moriguchi, Yusuke Narita, Mari Tanaka

Keyword:

Economics, General Economics, General Economics (econ.GN)

journal:

date:

2024-02-06 00:00:00

Abstract

What happens if selective colleges change their admission policies? We answer this question by analyzing the world's first introduction of nationally centralized meritocratic admissions in the early twentieth century. We find a persistent meritocracy-equity tradeoff. Compared to the decentralized system, the centralized system admitted more high-achieving applicants, producing a greater number of top elite bureaucrats in the long run. However, this impact came at the distributional cost of equal regional access to elite higher education and career advancement. Several decades later, the meritocratic centralization increased the number of urban-born career elites (e.g., top income earners) relative to rural-born ones.

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