Keju,Science and Technology:A Human Capital-Based Perspective
The traditional view of the imperial examination(Keju)system holds that it hindered the development of science and technology throughout China's history.However,this paper suggests a strikingly different result.First,based on historical panel data from between 580 and 1915,it empirically analyses the influence of the Keju system on ancient science and technology using the fixed-effects(FE)panel model,and shows that there is a significant positive correlation between the number of successful Keju candidates and the number of emerging scientific and technological figures.To address endogeneity issues,it adopts the interaction term of the distance between each region and the Keju locations,and the total number of successful Keju candidates in each period as an instrumental variable,and it conducts a two-stage least squares(IV-2SLS)estimate.The results also confirm previous conclusions,indicating that human capital accumulation shows a strong positive externality.Second,it analyses in depth the main forms of influence of the Keju system and finds that it significantly promotes the emergence of scientific and technological figures,and that the accumulation of emerging talent exerts a significant impact on culture,education and family inheritance.Finally,it attempts to analyse the influence of the Keju system on the scientific and technological talent of the Ming and Qing dynasties,and finds that it weakened during this period,which may have been mainly due to the increasing rigidity of the examination content and methodology.At the same time,it indicates that the disciplinary and innovative structure of scientific and technological development hindered modem scientific and technological progress.All this suggests that a serious mismatch in human capital can clearly have a hampering effect.
imperial examination(Keju)systemscience and technologyhuman capital