Supporting or Deteriorating : Local Cultural Forces, Mobility Expectations and Investment Preferences based on the changes in the selection system of the Qing Dynasty

Based on the perspective of central-territory resource allocation, this paper will investigate the influence of the strength of local cultural power on the preference of central-territory resource allocation and the degree of responsiveness to the central government under the shift of identity and expectation, using annual panel data at the prefectural level in the Qing Dynasty, decadal panel data in the 1800s-1900s, and data on Ming Dynasty jinshi and poets and texts included in the Quan Tang Poems. Using the impact of the Hundred Days Reform in 1898 as a quasi-experiment, this paper employs a double-difference approach to isolate the effects of psychological-level factors such as identity and expectations from the blockage of social mobility channels, and this paper employs an instrumental variables approach to further address the endogeneity issue