官员选拔和人事管理是国家治理体系的重要组成部分，也是实现国家治理能力现代化的保证。本项目结合中国特有的制度背景和组织经济学的一般理论，把官员的履历背景理解为一种政治人力资本，从激励、遴选和组织结构三重理论视角研究官员人事管理体制和国家治理能力的关系。项目建立了包含近5千名当代地市级地方官员和部委、厅、局官员完整履历的数据库，将围绕年龄结构与营商环境、同侪效应与产业转型升级、官员培养与政治激励、调动模式与公共支出效率、女性官员与治理绩效、人力资本组织结构与政策连续性等6个子课题进行理论建模和实证分析，从组织经济学的微观逻辑出发研究人事管理体制与经济发展和治理绩效之间的关系。项目将利用结构模型、空间计量模型、网络分析和大数据研究等现代科学工具，研究、发表6-7篇具有国际学术前沿水平的中英文论文，并在研究成果基础上推动当代官员选拔与治理模式研究议程与国际学术界的对话。

Political selection and the personnel management for public officials are a fundamental factor of state apparatus and governing capability. Drawing upon China’s unique institutional setting and theoretical models in organizational economics, this project aims to systematically examine the relationship between personnel management and the governing capability of state from three theoretical perspectives: incentive, selection, and organizational structure. We understand the career path and educational background of public officials as a kind of political human capital, which structures political incentive, personal capability and policy preference, and the organizational capacity of government. Building on an in-depth data set on the biographic information of nearly 5,000 government officials governing city, province, and ministerial positions, the project plans to study six specific research questions: (1) how the age structure affected the political incentive to enhance a healthy business environment, (2) how the peer effects due to relative performance evaluation interacted with policies on industrial upgrading, (3) how the political incentive of officials is shaped by the long term career path, (4) how city leaders with high variety of work experiences mattered for the structure and efficiency of public expenditure, (5) how female leaders matter for policies and performance on public goods provision, and (6) how the organization structure of political human capital affected the stability of public policies. These projects will employ an array of formal and quantitative methods, such as contract theory, structural model, spatial econometric, network analysis, and machine learning, to study the mechanisms between the system of personnel management for public officials and government capability and performance. The project expects to produce 6-7 high-quality papers and organize several international conference and workshops to discuss the research agendas on the implications of the researches for comparative political selection and state capability.