IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/cbsnow/2025_014.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Minority Bureaucrats’ Networks and Career Progression: Evidence from the Chinese Maritime Customs Service

Author

Listed:
  • Hu, Yan

    (Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School)

  • Maurer, Stephan

    (University of Edinburgh,)

Abstract

Do minorities benefit from social networks? In this paper, we study this ques-tion using the historical example of China’s first modern bureaucratic organization, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Drawing on newly digitized personnel records from 1876-1911, we first show that the Chinese clerks employed by the service were predomi-nantly Cantonese. Using the plausibly exogenous transfers of clerks across stations, we then estimate that a non-Cantonese (minority) clerk benefited significantly from meeting at least one colleague from his same province and dialect. Such connections led to faster promotion and a 5.6% salary increase, with even stronger effects when meeting a clerk who was either senior or of high quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Hu, Yan & Maurer, Stephan, 2025. "Minority Bureaucrats’ Networks and Career Progression: Evidence from the Chinese Maritime Customs Service," Working Papers 14-2025, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:cbsnow:2025_014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/10398/24de9395-cc0b-4cb0-88ca-c36d19ab638b
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: Full text not avaiable
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • N35 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Asia including Middle East
    • N75 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Asia including Middle East

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:cbsnow:2025_014. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CBS Library Research Registration Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/incbsdk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.