Who Benefits from Meritocracy?

We thank Luiza Aires, Mario Remigio and Lisa Pacheco for outstanding research assistance, and Enrique Pérez for help with data collection. We have benefited from the comments of Assaf Bernstein, Sandra Black, Leah Boustan, Shari Eli, James Feigenbaum, James Fenske, Ed Glaeser, Sun Go, Claudia Goldin, Walker Hanlon, Leander Heldring, Rick Hornbeck, Sarah Quincy, Chris Meissner, Marco Tabellini, Angela Vossmeyer, Tianyi Wang, Zach Ward, Guo Xu, and Noam Yutchmann, as well as by seminar participants at Corporación Andina de Fomento, NBER Postdocs Meeting, NBER Summer Institute DAE, the Annual Cliometrics Conference, the Economic History Association Meetings, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (PIMES) Political Economy Workshop, University of British Columbia, Melbourne University, University of Ottawa, University of Southern Denmark, Brown University, Yale University, Northwestern University, University of Toronto, Rutgers University, Pittsburgh University, Harvard University,Wilfrid Laurier University, Warwick University, UCSD, and the University of Houston. We benefited from funding from the NBER Economics of Mobility Fellowship, the UC Davis Small Grant in Aid of Research, the Michael Dearing Fellowship in support of Economic History Research, and the Hellman Fellowship program. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• online appendix

• May 31, 2022