On December 20th, 2017 Daniel Berkowitzwas invited by the School of Public Economics and Administration to give a talk about his co-authored paper on the effect of “Rule 18” on corporate investment in China.Findings from the paper show that the implementation of “Rule 18” by the Chinese government in October 2013 promoted a de-politicization reform in China. Two years after the enactment (2014-2015) those firms which were politically connected lost their preferential access to external finance and sales, thus they became more productive, innovative and transparent. They also invested more efficiently andquickly adjusted to the effects of the “Rule 18” Reform.
Daniel Berkowitz holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University and is Professor of Economics 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 publishedin journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Development Economics, and the Journal of Comparative Economics. From 2007 to 2016, he has also been a co-managing Editor (with Gerard Roland) of the Journal of Comparative Economics. Dr. Berkowitz has experience on China and Chinese economy, he has been visiting and is still visiting several Universities, such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Xiamen University, and SUIBE, only to mention some.
The talk was welcomed by the scientific community at SUFE, and saw the participation of faculty members from SPEA, SOE and SOF as well. Dr. Berkowitz was glad for being invited at SUFE; he visits China quite often for academic purposes, and expressed his interest to be visiting again SUFE in the near future.