We provide evidence that promotion incentives influence the effort of public employees by studying China's system of promotions for teachers. Predictions from a tournament model of promotion are tested using retrospective panel data on primary and middle school teachers. Consistent with theory,...

Economists have long recognized the important role of formal schooling and cognitive skills on labor market participation and wages. More recently, increasing attention has turned to the role of personality traits, or noncognitive skills. This study is among the first to examine how both...

This paper provides new evidence on educational disruptions caused by the Cultural Revolution and identifies the returns to schooling in urban China by exploiting individual-level variation in the effects of city-wide disruptions to education. The return to college is estimated at 49.8% using a...