NSE Seminar

 Government Transparency and Corruption: Evidence from a quasi-natural Experiment

时间：2017年12月15日下午16:00-17:30    

地点：朗润园万众楼一层小教室

主持人：夏俊杰、王勇、王歆

主讲人：Daniel Berkowitz (University of Pittsburgh)

【Abstract】

There is a growing concern that local officials in China enrich themselves  while ignoring the public interest. Thus, at the start of 2012, 100 counties were required to post detailed accounts of their activities on electronic platforms. We argue that this reform required treated counties to operate more transparently. Controlling for potential selection bias, we argue that this reform led treated counties to reduce corruption as measured by auditing reports and also industrial land prices. We also find this reform led treated counties to provide more  public goods. Our findings suggest a mechanism in which local officials who seek to be promoted put more weight on local welfare and less on rents.

【Speaker】

Daniel Berkowitz is currently Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. His scholarship covers the fields of New Institutional Economics, Development, Law and Finance, Applied Microeconomics, and China. On these topics he published, among others, in outlets including the Journal of Comparative Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics and in the Princeton University Press Series on Economic History (with Karen Clay). During 2007-2016, he served as  co-managing Editor (with Gerard Roland) of the Journal of Comparative Economics. During 2011 and 2012 he was a Visiting Senior Faculty member at Tsinghua University; and, during 2009 and 2010 he was a Visiting Professor at the City University of Hong Kong.