Speaker：Martin Berka，Massey University

Time: 10:00~11:30am, Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Site：EMS B251

Abstract: We study the determining factors of differences in price levels between Chinese provinces. We consider the pro- and anti-competitive roles of fiscal transfers on provincial price levels, while taking into account the standard macroeconomic determinants of price differences such as sectoral levels of productivity, inter-provincial migration levels, and the importance of agglomeration effects. We find that, on the net, fiscal transfers have generally lower relative price levels and in that sense the pro-competitive effects seem to be more significant. We speculate that this may be due to the important infrastructure-building projects that are part-funded by central government transfers have on improving the productive capacity, and the overall connectedness, of a given province.

Introduction to the Speaker：

Martin Berka，a professor of Macroeconomics at the School of Economics and Finance, Massey University, and a director of the New Zealand Centre for Macroeconomics. He also serves as the founding director of the Open Economy Macroeconomics Research Programme at Centre of Applied Macroeconomic Analysis at the Australian National University, an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Surveys and New Zealand Economic Papers, an executive officer of the Central Bank Research Association, a Fellow of the Asian Bureau of Financial and Economic Research, an occasional member of the External Economic Forecast Panel at the New Zealand Treasury, a fellow of the Slovak Economic Association, a board member of the Australasian Macroeconomics Society, and a research associate at the Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. His papers have been published in American Economic Review, Review of International Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics.