S-WoPEc
 
Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics
HomeAboutSeriesSubject/JEL codesAdvanced Search
Institute for Economies in Transition, Bank of Finland BOFIT Discussion Papers, Institute for Economies in Transition, Bank of Finland

No 13/2008:
Price convergence and geographic dimension of market integration: Evidence from China

Maria Ritola ()

Abstract: This study analyses the level and geographic dimension of China's market integration. The objective is to provide a broad characterization of China's market integration by performing a variety of empirical tests and providing comparisons to other studies on the same topic. The models tested are grounded in the law of one price. Price convergence is analysed with univariate time series methods, where linear and non-linear cointegration models refer to convergence in the short run and in the long run, respectively. The non-linear model is considered a good fit for analysing transitional economies, because the non-linear trend variable in the model indicates whether there is movement towards integration in the long run. Convergence of prices is first analysed by comparing city-level prices with China's national average price level and then by dividing China into three regional clusters. The estimation results suggest that the level of integration across Chinese cities is fairly high by international standards. The great majority of price series trending towards integration are services. The geographic pattern of China's market integration did not turn out as expected. Eastern cities are among the least integrated cities in the nationwide examination. Relatively high levels of integration were detected from several central and south-eastern cities. Furthermore, the cluster convergence approach to analyse China's market integration did not augment the eastern cities' level of convergence.

Keywords: China; market integration; law of one price; price dispersion; regional clusters; convergence; (follow links to similar papers)

JEL-Codes: C12; C32; P22; R10; (follow links to similar papers)

37 pages, August 27, 2008

Before downloading any of the electronic versions below you should read our statement on copyright.
Download GhostScript for viewing Postscript files and the Acrobat Reader for viewing and printing pdf files.

Full text versions of the paper:

dp1308.pdf    PDF-file
Download Statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Päivi Määttä ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson () or Helena Lundin ().

Programing by
Design by Joachim Ekebom

Handle: RePEc:hhs:bofitp:2008_013 This page was generated on 2014-12-14 19:21:18