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on China |
| By: | Yongheng Deng; Joseph Gyourko; Jing Wu |
| Abstract: | We provide the first multi-city, constant quality land price index for 35 major markets in China. While there is meaningful heterogeneity in land price growth across cities, on average the last nine years have seen land values skyrocket in many markets, not just those on or near the coast. The typical market has experienced double-digit compound average annual growth in real, constant-quality land values. The 2009-2010 stimulus period typically saw large surges in prices. Three notable characteristics about the land value appreciation series are their strong mean reversion at annual frequencies, the strong common factor in their movement, and their very high volatility. Quantities, not just prices, have been sharply increasing in recent years. The typical amount of space supplied via land auctions in our 35 city sample has doubled since 2008. Some local political economy traits such as the time the local Chinese Communist Party leader has been in office are correlated with land supply volume. We also investigate the quality of the two most prominent house price indexes in China, and conclude that a traditional hedonic index more accurately reflects how house prices have changed over time in eight major markets in China. Repeat sales indexes have become standard in many countries, but they are not as useful in emerging markets such as China because the bulk of the housing stock is relatively new and has not traded multiple times. A hedonic index shows much higher house price growth over time that do officially published series for the eight markets examined. |
| JEL: | R0 R14 R3 R31 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18403&r=cna |
| By: | de Brauw, Alan (International Food Policy Research Institute); Giles, John T. (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we examine the impact of reductions in barriers to migration on the consumption of households in rural China. We find that increased migration from rural villages leads to significant increases in consumption per capita, and that this effect is stronger for poorer households within villages. Household income per capita and non-durable consumption per capita both increase with out-migration, and this increase is greater for poorer households. We also establish a causal relationship between increased out-migration and investment in housing and durable goods assets, and these effects are also stronger for poorer households. We do not find robust evidence, however, to support a connection between increased migration and investment in productive activity. Instead, increased migration is associated with two significant changes for poorer households: increases both in the total labor supplied to productive activities and in the land per capita managed by the household. In examining the effect of migration, we pay considerable attention to motivating, developing and evaluating our identification strategy. |
| Keywords: | migration, migrant networks, consumption, poverty, wealth, rural China |
| JEL: | O12 O15 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2012–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6765&r=cna |
| By: | Mu, Ren (Texas A&M University); Du, Yang (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) |
| Abstract: | When social security is established to provide pensions to parents, their reliance upon children for future financial support decreases; and their need to save for retirement also falls. We use the expansion of pension coverage from the state sector to the non-state sector in urban China as a quasi-experiment to analyze the intergenerational impact of social security on educational investments in children. With a difference-in-differences framework, we find a significant increase in the total education expenditure attributable to pension expansion. The results are unlikely to be driven by trends in medical insurance, wages, bonus income, and housing values. They are robust to the inclusion of a large set of control variables and to different specifications, including one based on the instrumental variable method. |
| Keywords: | pension, education expenditure, gender difference, urban, China |
| JEL: | J26 J24 O15 D13 |
| Date: | 2012–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6797&r=cna |
| By: | Liu, Hong (Central University of Finance and Economics); Zhao, Zhong (Renmin University of China) |
| Abstract: | In 2007, China launched a subsidized voluntary public health insurance program, the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance, for urban residents without formal employment, including children, the elderly, and other unemployed urban residents. We estimate the impact of this program on health care utilization and expenditure using 2006 and 2009 waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey. We find that this program has significantly increased the utilization of formal medical services. This result is robust to various specifications and multiple estimation strategies. However, there is no evidence that it has reduced out-of-pocket expenditure and some evidence suggesting that it has increased the total health care expenditure. We also find that this program has improved medical care utilization more for the elderly, for the low- and middle-income families, and for the residents in the relatively poor western region. |
| Keywords: | urban China, health insurance, health care utilization, health expenditure |
| JEL: | G22 H43 |
| Date: | 2012–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6768&r=cna |