Finance Seminar（2017-11）

Topic: Social Ties and the Selection of China's Political Elite

Speaker: Yongxiang Wang, University of Southern California

Time: Tuesday, 4 July, 10:00-11:30

Place: Room 216, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract:

We examine the role of social ties in the selection of China's Politburo, the country's highest governing body. We use hometown, college, and workplace ties to incumbent Politburo members as measures of connectedness, and obtain the counterintuitive finding that hometown and college ties are negative predictors of selection: after controlling for candidate birth city and college, we find that hometown and college ties are each associated with 6-10 percentage point reductions in selection probability. This effect is stronger under Mao, consistent with anti-factionalist sentiment as a contributing factor, and is weaker for connections to senior Politburo members, consistent with competition within groups for leadership positions as a second factor underlying the “connections penalty”.

Introduction:

Dr. Yongxiang Wang is an Associate Professor of Finance and Business Economics in Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. His research interests are Empirical Corporate Finance; Political Economy; Organizational Economics; The Chinese Economy. She holds a B.A. in Management and M.A. in Finance & Econ from Renmin University of China, He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from Columbia Business School.

//www.marshall.usc.edu/personnel/yongxiang-wang

Your participation is warmly welcomed!