Assignment of provincial officials based on economic performance: Evidence from China

•The objective of central government determines the pattern of matching between provincial officials and provinces.•Before the early 2000s, the pattern of assignment is close to positive assortative matching between the official's ability and provinces.•After the early 2000s, the pattern of assignment converges to negative assortative matching.

In China, the allocation of provincial officials reflects the tradeoff of the central authority between the economic growth and regional disparity. Before the early 2000s, the pattern of assignment is close to positive assortative matching between the official's ability and the local provincial endowment, which implies that the central authority's purpose is to maximize the aggregate outputs across provinces, and after the early 2000s, the pattern of assignment converges to negative assortative matching, which is well justified by the central authority's objective of minimizing the regional disparity. This paper contributes to the literatures by exploring the cadre management on the horizontal level.