Black Market Performance: Illegal Trade in Beijing

License Plates

主讲人：肖俊极

时间：9月10日, 12:30 -13:30.

地点：明德主楼734会议室

主讲人简介：肖俊极教授现就职于悉尼科技大学，于加拿大多伦多大学获得博士学位。他的研究领域为实证产业组织、环境经济学和中国经济。近期，他的研究集中于中国汽车行业，探讨了竞争结构、环境政策的福利效应以及该行业的纵向约束等问题。在加入悉尼科技大学商学院之前，肖教授分别在香港中文大学、复旦大学和上海财经大学任教。2001年获德国DFG奖学金，2010年获中国国家自然科学基金资助，2016年获香港研资局资助。

摘要：Black markets are often thought to create welfare gains by allocating restricted goods to agents who value them the most. The illegal nature of black markets however create transaction costs that impede trade. We estimate the incentives to trade in the black market for license plates that emerged following the recent rationing of new car sales in Beijing by lottery. Under weak assumptions on car preferences, we use optimal transport methods and comprehensive data on car sales to estimate that at least 12% of the quota is illegally traded . We develop a simple market equilibrium model which allows us to infer bounds on transaction costs, such as potential legal liabilities, and transaction prices, given the estimated market size. The inferred transaction prices are on par with those reported anecdotally in the daily news. We find that up to 66% of the gains from trade are lost to transaction costs. The size of the transaction costs points to potentially severe market frictions.