Conference Agenda

Our understanding of how the value of nontradable amenities affects productivity has been largely informed by cross-city analyses. This paper examines the impact of nontradable amenity variety on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) within a consumer metropolis, using geocoded firm survey data and crowd-sourced business reviews. Drawing on the presale of ground-floor retail space of nearby new construction residential buildings as well as the population densities estimated from historical census data, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in restaurant variety in the vicinity of firms leads to a 4.4% increase in the firm TFP. Larger effects are observed for non-SOEs, labor- and skill-intensive firms, and firms with higher commuting costs. Furthermore, we highlight the human capital channels governing these TFP effects, including the quality of human capital, workers’ subjective well-being, after-work interaction, and research intensity. Our results provide novel evidence that nontradable amenity variety can enhance urban productivity even at fine spatial scales.

House price effects of water restoration reflect the public attitude to ecological assets and policy implementation, but the role of water quality changes in policy impacts has so far been neglected. In this study, we focused on the Hangzhou real estate market—in particular, along the Beijing–Hangzhou Grand Canal and the Shangtang River—in the context of the Five-Water Co-Governance policy implementation. We used a hedonic price model within a difference-in-differences framework to investigate house price changes and water quality improvement before and after the implementation of the policy. The results show that urban restoration does not generate a price premium for waterfront housing in the short run, while it causes significant price depreciation in the long run. Although water quality improved 4–5 years after restoration, it still has not had a significant impact on the prices of nearby housing. This conclusion continues to be robust when the impact of increased shipping is excluded. This price deprecation may be attributed to the stigma phenomenon. Our findings help to understand citizens’ attitudes to river restoration and the importance of propaganda in increasing public awareness of policies.

With the rapid promotion of China's new urbanisation, a large number of old districts are not only facing painful and difficult problems such as lack of public service facilities, difficulties in parking and travelling, and poor quality of living environment, but also the hidden dangers of building quality and safety are expanding, and the need for renovation and renewal is very urgent. As a result, the renovation of old urban areas is being used as an important channel to improve people's livelihood and expand investment and stimulate domestic demand, and has attracted the attention of local governments. In the face of this situation, the "Future Community" was born. This paper investigates the external effects of urban community renovation on housing prices in the surrounding neighbourhoods using the double difference method based on a characteristic price model. The empirical results show that: (i) urban community renovation generates positive externalities on the neighbourhood housing market, with residential prices in the neighbourhood increasing by an average of 5.2 percentage points after the announcement of the list of future communities; (ii) the externalities of urban community renovation tend to increase in distance in space and are positively correlated with the scale of the renovation project; (iii) urban community renovation projects have a greater impact on residential properties and prices in areas with better transportation and commercial services conditions.

Historical heritage conservation is one of the important issues in urban sustainable development and practical challenges faced by Hong Kong's urban renewal process. On one hand, literature suggests that the conservation of historic heritage as cultural amenities has a positive effect on local property values. On the other hand, the conservation of historic heritage can cause concerns among residents about the loss of neighborhood characteristics, hindering the progress of urban renewal. From 1996 to 2000, the Antiquities and Monuments Office conducted a comprehensive survey of historic buildings throughout Hong Kong, during which 8,803 buildings were recorded and 1,444 buildings were assessed with higher cultural value and selected for further investigation. Using detailed housing transaction data from 1992 to 2022, we estimated the premium of historic monuments added on neighboring property values, as well as its spillover effects. We found that the impact only exists when the historic buildings were designated and assessed with higher evaluation results. The designation of historic monuments has a negative impact on the demolition in the vicinity and the probability that the site to be selected as Urban Renewal Authority projects. Furthermore, we analyzed the influence of Key Opinion Leader (KOL) on historical heritage assessments and urban renewal by examining the property purchase decisions of Hong Kong government officials and local artists.