一、主題：Unequal Returns to China’s Intercity Road Network
二、主講人：宋铮 教授
Prof. Song is a professor at the Department of Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), an outstanding fellow of the Faculty of Social Science at CUHK and a co-director of CUHK-Tsinghua Joint Research Center for Chinese Economy. He is also a senior fellow of ABFER and a fellow of Luohan Academy. His research focuses on Chinese economy and macroeconomics. His papers were published by leading academic journals including American Economic Review, Econometrica and Journal of Political Economy. His paper “Growing like China” won Sunyefang Economic Science Award. Before joining CUHK, Prof. Song was an associate professor of economics at Chicago Booth. Prof. Song is also a co-editor of China Economic Review, an associate editor of Econometrica and sits on a number of academic advisory boards such as China’s Economics Foundation and Hong Kong Institute for Monetary and Financial Research.
宋铮教授現為香港中文大學經濟系教授，香港中文大學社會科學院傑出研究員，香港中文大學與清華大學中國經濟研究聯合中心聯席主任。他同時也是 ABFER 高級研究員、羅漢堂研究員。他的研究方向為中國經濟和宏觀經濟學。他的論文發表在《美國經濟評論》（AER）、《計量經濟學》（Econometrica）和《政治經濟學雜志》（JPE）等頂級學術期刊上。他的論文“Growing like China”曾獲2013年孫冶方經濟學獎。宋教授亦是《中國經濟評論》（CER）的聯合主編、《計量經濟學》（Econometrica）的副主編，并擔任多個學術顧問委員會的委員，如中國經濟學基金會和香港貨币金融研究所等。
三、時間：2021年11月19日14:30- 16:00
四、地點：騰訊會議 ID： 699 194 000
五、主持人：黃志剛教授，bevictor伟德官网副院長
六、講座内容
We estimate the returns to infrastructure investments for each city-to-city link in China’s road network. Using real-time GPS data from over half a million trucks, we first identify congested and uncongested links based on whether speed decreases with traffic density. We then estimate the elasticity of traffic flows to the capacity of a link conditional on its congestion status. We incorporate congestion heterogeneity into a trade model with optimal route choices developed by Allen and Arkolakis (2019). Our structural estimation shows that the model can replicate the main features of traffic flow, speed and congestion in the data. The benefit of expanding the capacity of a link is inferred from the estimated model. The cost of the expansion is estimated from construction costs based on physical topography and market value of acquired land. We find that about 64% of China’s intercity links are uncongested and associated with negative returns. The returns are much higher for congested links and the dispersion is generally large. While we focus on marginal local improvements in individual link capacity and do not quantify aggregate misallocation of the entire network, the large dispersion in returns across links suggests there could be misallocation of road infrastructure investment in China. To facilitate comparison, we also analyze real-time traffic flow data for highways in England. In sharp contrast to China, almost all intercity links in England are found to be congested.
