Martin Berka
Dean (Academic), Griffith Business School
Griffith University
170 Kessels Road, Nathan, Queensland 4111, Australia
ph: +61 7 3735 7628
email: m.berka@griffith.edu.au
I am Dean (Academic) of Griffith Business School and Professor of Economics at Griffith University. My research is in international finance, open economy macroeconomics and monetary economics, with a particular interest in exchange rates, international prices and trade. My recent work also examines social media and housing markets, financial development, and collective decision-making.
Before joining Griffith in 2024, I was Professor of Economics and Head of the School of Economics and Finance at Massey University, following academic appointments at the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington.
Co-director, Open Economy Macroeconomics Programme, CAMA, Australian National University
Associate Editor, Reviews of Economic Literature and New Zealand Economic Papers
Editor, NEP Open Economy Macroeconomics
Fellow, Slovak Economic Association
Previously, I was Director of the New Zealand Centre for Macroeconomics (2017–2024), Executive Officer of the Central Bank Research Association (2016–2018), and a Research Associate at the Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (2010–2020). I also served as an Academic Fellow of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (2014–2015) and on the New Zealand Treasury’s external economic forecast panel in 2016 and 2018.
I have also been a programme organiser of the ABFER conference and the Southern Workshop in Macroeconomics (previously the VUW Macro Workshop). I was an organiser of the RBNZ December Macro Conference and a local organiser of NBER EASE in Wellington in 2013.
*** CONFERENCE ARCHIVE: the Inaugural AUSTRALASIAN CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL MACROECONOMICS ***
Academic CV · Updated October 2026
Recent working papers
Accessibility as a Foundational Driver of Institutional Allocation and Economic and Financial Development, with Yuk Ying Chang. Working paper dated 25 September 2026; last revised 1 October 2026.
Extraneous Influences in Collective Decision-Making: Evidence from Atmospheric Conditions, with Yuk Ying Chang. Working paper, 4 June 2026; posted on SSRN 1 August 2026.
Economic Policy Uncertainty Exposure and Corporate Investment Efficiency: Evidence from China, with Yantao Wen, Alexander Molchanov and Yafeng Qin. Working paper; posted on SSRN 13 May 2025.
Social Media Sentiment and House Prices: Evidence from 35 Chinese Cities, with Yiran Mao. Massey Discussion Paper 2301 (2023); posted on SSRN 6 May 2025.
No Pain, No Gain? Mining Pollution and Morbidity, with Odmaa Narantungalag and Syed Hasan. Massey University Economics Discussion Paper 22.03 (2022).
Comments on “Strategic complementarity and asymmetric price setting among firms”, in Inflation Dynamics in Asia and the Pacific, BIS Papers 111, pp. 99–102 (2020).
Real exchange rates and sectoral productivity in the Eurozone (with Michael B. Devereux and Charles Engel), the American Economic Review 108(6), 2018 (also NBER WP 20510). See replication material.
Basle Accord and Financial Intermediation: The Impact of Policy, Review, Vol 2 (100), (with Christian Zimmermann), 2018.
Trends in European Real Exchange Rates (with Michael B. Devereux), Economic Policy Vol. 28(74), 2013 (lead article). Working paper (longer) version, slides, and data.
Real exchange rate adjustment in and out of the Eurozone (with Michael B. Devereux and Charles Engel), American Economic Review (Papers & Proceedings) 102(3), 2012
International Risk-sharing and commodity prices (with Mario J. Crucini and Chih-Wei Wang), Canadian Journal of Economics, Vol 45 (2), 2012 (Working paper version here)
The Consumption Terms of Trade and Commodity Prices (with Mario J. Crucini), published in Commodity Prices and Markets, NBER book series published by University of Chicago Press (eds. Ito and Rose), February 2011 (NBER WP 15580 here)
Non-linear Adjustment in International Prices and Physical Characteristics of Goods, published in Review of International Economics, Vol 17 (1), 2009.
Funding of regions in New Zealand, published in Clm. Economia, No. 6, 2006
Working papers
General Equilibrium Model of Arbitrage Trade and Real Exchange Rate Persistence
Deviations in real exchange rates across OECD economies and their structural determinants (with Daan Steenkamp). Also an ABFER WP 19029. The current version is here.
Price setting in a leading Swiss online supermarket (with Michael B. Devereux and Thomas Rudolph, first draft (NBER WP 17126))
Credit Crunch as an Optimal Decision of Risk-Averse Banks under Uncertainty
Purchasing Power Parity Puzzle as a Trade Phenomenon (Ph.D. thesis)
Comments and Reviews
BIS Research Paper No. 82b, Comment on: Cross-border portfolios: assets, liabilities and wealth transfers in Cross-border financial linkages: challenges for monetary policy and financial stability, October 2015
Book review: Ethics, Economics and Politics: Principles of Public Policy, 2002 in Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, 16(3), April 2005
Recent Teaching
Econ 413 - International economics: monetary
Econ 305 - Advanced macroeconomics
Econ 202 - Intermediate Macroeconomics
Concordances between
6-digit IO codes and 4-digit US SIC 1987 codes. Constructed for translating 6-digit US Input-Output tables for years 1971, 1977, 1982, 1987 and 1992 into SIC 87. The second column denotes a weight (assumed equal across all SIC industries in a particular row).
4-digit US SIC 1987 codes and 4-digit ISIC (rev. 3) codes. Same, aggregated to 2-digits.
4-digit ISIC (rev. 3) codes and 5-digit SITC (rev. 3) codes. Same, aggregated into 2-digit ISIC (rev.3) and 2-digit SITC (rev.3)
Note: second column denotes a weight (assumed equal across all industries in a particular row
Restructuring the Banking Sector in Slovakia (M.A. thesis), with defense notes (all you really need to know, encrypted)
Some recent conference discussions:
Discussion of Benefits of Labor Mobility in a Currency Union by Christopher House, Christian Proebsting, and Linda Tesar (at ABFER 2018 in Singapore)
Discussion of Measuring the stance of monetary policy in conventional and unconventional environments by Leo Krippner (at NBER EASE in Tokyo)
Discussion of Policy Regime Change against Chronic Deflation? Policy Option under a Long- term Liquidity Trap by Fujiwara, Nakazono and Ueda (at NBER EASE in Tokyo)
Discussion of Global Value Chains and Effective Exchange Rates by Patel, Wang and Wei (at ABFER in Singapore)
Discussion of Finance at Center Stage: Lessons from Euro Crisis by Maurice Obstfeld (at NBER EASE in Wellington)
Discussion of Identifying the Valuation Effects and Agency Costs of Corporate Diversification: Evidence from the Geographic Diversification of U.S. Banks by Martin Goetz, Luc Laeven, and Ross Levine (at ABFER in Singapore)
Discussion of Manufacturing-Finance Comparative Advantage and Global Imbalances by Rui Mao and Yang Yao (at ABFER in Singapore)
Discussion of Declining Labor Shares and the Global Rise of Savings Loukas Karabarbounis and Brent Neiman (at NBER EASE 2012 in Taipei)
Discussion of Payroll Tax and Household Consumption by Chongen Bai and Binzhen Wu (at NBER EASE 2011 in Beijing)
Discussion of Financial Choice in a Non-Ricardian Model of Trade by Katheryn N. Russ and Diego Valderrama (at the Second conference of Microeconomic Foundations of real exchange rate analysis, Vanderbilt University)
Research reports and theses of some of the students I supervised:
Price differences and agricultural food market integration in Sub-Saharan Africa by Brooke Treadgold
European real exchange rate and total factor productivity: an empirical study by Erin Wilson
Is globalization operating to reduce inflation: Evidence from 6 OECD countries by Menghan Cai
The economic relationship between trade and immigration in New Zealand by Mingming Qian
Explaining exchange rate pass-through to different Asian countries by Xuemei Xiang
Explaining exchange rate pass-through in different prices by using VAR model in European countries by Fangfang Liang
Exchange rate pass-through to import prices across industries in New Zealand by Hanshi Lin
Explaining the persistence of Aus-NZ real exchange rate deviations across industries by Jinhui Zhang
Media
Brief radio interview on the Chinese economy (Jan 2016. - an.mp3 file)
Other
New Economics Papers in Open Economy Macroeconomics
RePEc - Research Papers in Economics, the largest database of econ literature, free of charge.
Griffith University / Griffith Business School
"A perfection of means and a confusion of aims seems to be our main problem" - Albert Einstein (other quotes)
A writeup for a UBC VOC Journal about a trip across the Tasman. And one that UBC Trek magazine wrote about the row. A tiez pre SME.