Conference Agenda

The extant literature does not explore the link between housing price and old-age financial support based on bequest motives. This paper divides bequest motives into housing bequest motive and monetary bequest motive, and develop an overlapping life-cycle model to analyze the impact of housing price on bequest motives and old-age financial support. Employing the biennial data sets of CHARLS during 2011-2018, we find that housing price growth increase old-age financial support. In particular, the housing bequest motive arising from housing price variation increases old-age financial support, whilst the monetary bequest motive induced from housing price variation decreases old-age financial support. However, the impacts of housing bequest motive on old-age financial support is greater than that of monetary bequest motive on old-age financial support. Housing prices impact old-age financial supports in the cities with higher housing prices, but do not influence old-age financial support in the cities with lower housing prices. Housing prices affect old-age financial support in the households with a son, but do not impact the households with a daughter.

In the two decades following China’s housing privatization, urban housing market rapidly grew into a growth engine and the lion’s share of household wealth. Government-led housing boom became a critical source of local revenue, which in turn fueled the capital investment for economic growth and urban expansion. The overwhelming belief in home price appreciation made it imperative for every household to strive for housing ownership and investment within regulatory constraints on housing speculation. Analyzing four waves of national household finance surveys from 2011 to 2019, this study describes the accumulation and distribution of housing wealth of China’s urban households and its dominant role in household wealth growth and inequality. Drawing insights from household portfolio choice behavior in China’s institutional and cultural contexts, this research further explains household housing wealth through ability, eligibility and timing of housing ownership and investment. The growth and distribution of urban household wealth suggest both disparate housing wealth paths across age cohorts and spatial, socioeconomic and social identity polarization. Households of young urban migrant born after mid-1980s is the most indebted group and would be more financially fragile during a housing bust.

The redevelopment of abandoned industrial heritage has gained increasing political support as an essential component of urban renewal. The renovation plans are typically designed to stimulate urban renewal in the vicinity of these sites. However, little is known about the effectiveness of these policies. This study aims to examine the impact of Hangzhou Iron and Steel Industrial heritage redevelopment on neighboring housing prices in Hangzhou, China. This study aims to examine the impact of Hangzhou Iron and Steel Industrial heritage redevelopment on neighboring housing prices in Hangzhou, China. Specifically, we use a spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) framework to assess the levels and trends in housing prices before and after the announcement of the industrial heritage renewal based on housing sales data from 2018 to 2020. Empirical results show that the industrial heritage has a negative impact on surrounding housing prices. However, the redevelopment announcement increases housing prices 7.3% for properties within 2 km radius of the industrial site. Furthermore, the results indicate that the impacts of the redevelopment announcement differ significantly across the distribution of housing prices, with no significant impact on low-priced properties, and the greatest impact on high-priced properties. These findings provide important insights for policymakers to better understand how the redevelopment of industrial heritage affects neighborhoods and to develop policies that maximize the economic benefits from industrial heritage redevelopments.

We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the housing market in Shanghai, China. We employ a property fixed effects model and a difference-in-differences hedonic approach and find that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted housing prices. Compared to non-infected communities, housing prices in infected communities decreased by 0.5% after the pandemic. The price effects are more pronounced for housing with smaller size, lower value and in an urban location. We further study the mechanisms and find that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the time-on-the-market and lowered the listing prices of property. Our study suggests that the pandemic has had contagion and distributional effects on the housing market. The pandemic has widened the gap in housing wealth between homeowners in low-value and high-value housing.