Conference Agenda

From the Chinese government proposing the"implementation of urban construction tax and fee reform" in 2003, to adding “research and promote property tax reform" into the national “12th Five-Year Plan" in 2010, property tax reform has received widespread attention in mainland China. Under the background of governments’ “land finance" transformation, it has become an important part of the new round of fiscal and taxation system reform. This study examines the stance of official Chinese media on property tax reform from 2011 to 2022, based on news articles published on the four major official news websites (Guangming Net, People's Daily Online, CNR News, and China News Service). The study explores the views of different social groups, including the government, experts, and the public, from an official perspective on property tax reform and summarizes them into “seven questions about property tax”. The findings indicate that the Chinese government has recognized the necessity and urgency of property tax reform, and the official media has been actively promoting the reform agenda. However, the study also finds that the government faces challenges in implementing the reform due to various factors, such as regional economic disparities and resistance from vested interest groups. The paper reveals the official stance on property tax reform in China and provides deeper insights into future research and policy making.

Increasingly similar corporate disclosures may fail to provide potential investors with adequate information about a company to facilitate astute, informed, and/or rational decisions. In light of this concern, the current investigation uses a sample of 1,889 annual report (10-k) filings by 234 separate equity REITs from 2000-2020 to examine the impact of year-over-year linguistic similarly on the perceived information content of corporate disclosures. Consistent with recently expressed SEC concerns, we first document a significant increase in the degree of REIT annual report similarity over time. Despite this pattern, we find that innovations in these corporate disclosures remain directly related to observable changes in both the operational complexity and financial position of the firm, and further, engender significant market reactions. Lastly, these findings are robust to the inclusion of alternative information channels and are significantly more pronounced within informationally opaque market settings. In sum, we find REIT annual reports remain a value-relevant source of information for market participants.

In this paper, we examine whether idiosyncratic variations in individual experience explain heterogeneity in expectations. Combining household survey data, administrative population data, and housing registry data for the Netherlands, we find that conditional on the market development, households’ expectations about aggregate future house price growth vary with their individual experience. Our results are robust to specifications with alternative geographical ranges of the market or reducing the issue of unobserved heterogeneity. We further find that how households retrieve and utilize information might be explained by the recency and the informativeness of experience, and the household sophistication. These results shed light on the role that the individual experience plays in the expectation formation.

Through a tenant questionnaire survey, this study analyses tenants demand satisfaction in informal rental housing and its influences in Beijing, a key city of China. Questionnaires and in-depth interviews were conducted in informal rental housing projects in z district of Beijing. With high housing prices and increasing migrant population in Chinese big cities, tenant choice of migrant populations who has short migrant periods tend to choose rent to solve their living demand. China's housing rental market has developed in recent years, and the total supply of rental housing provided by the formal housing sector is insufficient, so the migrant population at the low-middle income levels in the big city tend to transfer into the informal housing sector, which has the distinguishing features of lower rents. This study examines the satisfaction of informal housing under the current supply situation from the perspective of tenant demand, and uses stepwise regression analysis to investigate the factors influencing satisfaction, including individual characteristics, rent price, commuting conditions, and geographic location. The advantage of rent price affordability is the most important factor that increases the overall satisfaction of informal rental housing, and its influence even compensates for the negative impact on satisfaction of informal rental housing due to poor commuting conditions and remote location.

Abstract: Mountainous cities are blessed with abundant mountain resources, which provide scenic views, recreational opportunities, and fresh air for urban residents. Urban development in mountainous area cities has been constrained by the rugged terrain as well. Using Guiyang City, China as a case study, this research evaluates the external effects of the natural amenities on real estate prices based on the hedonic pricing model. The results demonstrate that the distance from the mountain and the area of mountain scenery are positively correlated with real estate prices. The price of housing increases by 1.6% when the distance to the mountain scenery is decreased by 1 km. A 1 km2 increase in the size of mountain scenery leads to a 0.7% increase in housing prices on average. In contrast, a 1-degree increase in the slope of the land on which the residence is located will result in a 0.4% discount on property value. Moreover, the impact of elevation on residential prices is relatively small. Additionally, this study subdivides the housing market and finds that mountain scenery has different effects on the prices of low-floor, mid-floor, and high-floor residential properties. Specifically, the distance to mountain scenery can bring the highest value-added of 4% to properties above the 7th floor, while it can result in a 1% discount in the prices of properties on the 1st to 6th floors. Furthermore, low-floor residences are more sensitive to the area of mountain scenery. These findings demonstrate the vertical heterogeneity of the effect of mountain scenery on residential prices. Notably, this study establishes a quantile regression model and finds that buyers who purchase high-priced properties are more willing to pay additional fees for large-scale mountainous scenery but are not very sensitive to the proximity of mountain scenery. A healthy real estate market and sustainable development of mountainous cities are both supported by these research findings.