The Impacts of Centralized Admission on Regional Distribution of Human Capital: An Empirical Study Based on Mechanism Design

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K13719
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 07050:Public economics and labor economics-related
• Research Institution: Hitotsubashi University
• Principal Investigator: TANAKA Mari 一橋大学, 経済研究所, 准教授 (70792688)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 教育 / 市場設計

Outline of Final Research Achievements

When the government has limited resources for higher education, what is an effective and equitable way to allocate school seats to students? We study the impacts of changing admissions systems by investigating the world's first known implementation of nationally centralized meritocratic admissions and its subsequent reversals in the early twentieth century in Japanese national higher education. We find a sharp tradeoff between meritocracy and equal regional access to higher education and career advancement. As high-achieving students were located disproportionately in urban areas, increased regional mobility caused urban applicants to crowd out rural applicants from elite higher education. Four decades later, the meritocratic centralization increases the number of urban-born career elites relative to rural-born elites. For the whole country, the meritocratic centralization also increased the number of top-ranking bureaucrats, suggesting a national productive efficiency gain.

Free Research Field

労働経済学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

これまで経済学の市場設計の分野では統一選抜制度に関する理論研究が盛んに行なわれてきたが、実際に起こった入試制度の変更事例を用いた実証研究は非常に少ない。さらに、日本の旧制高校の入試制度に関しては、近年の経済学の市場設計の分野で発展した理論的な枠組みにより分析を行った研究はこれまでなかった。分析の結果、能力主義的な入学者選抜はエリート層の地域構成に影響を与えたが、それと同時に、同じ教育資源を用いてより多くの優秀な人材を育成した可能性も分析から明らかになった。この結果は、能力主義的選抜と教育機会の平等との間にはトレードオフが存在したことを示している。