IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bos/wpaper/wp2020-005.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

China’s Housing Bubble, Infrastructure Investment, and Economic Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Shenzhe Jiang

    (Peking University)

  • Jianjun Miao

    (Boston University)

  • Yuzhe Zhang

    (Texas A&M University)

Abstract

China’s housing prices have been growing rapidly over the past few decades, despite low growth in rents. We study the impact of housing bubbles on China’s economy, based on the understanding that local governments use land-sale revenue to fuel infrastructure investment. We calibrate our model to the Chinese data over the period 2003-2013 and find that our calibrated model can match the declining capital return and GDP growth, the average housing price growth, and the rising infrastructure to GDP ratio in the data. We conduct two counterfactual experiments to estimate the impact of a bubble collapse and a property tax.

Suggested Citation

  • Shenzhe Jiang & Jianjun Miao & Yuzhe Zhang, 2019. "China’s Housing Bubble, Infrastructure Investment, and Economic Growth," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2020-005, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bos:wpaper:wp2020-005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://people.bu.edu/miaoj/HousingBubble07.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hanming Fang & Quanlin Gu & Wei Xiong & Li-An Zhou, 2016. "Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 105-166.
    2. Morris A. Davis, 2010. "housing and the business cycle," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Matteo Iacoviello, 2005. "House Prices, Borrowing Constraints, and Monetary Policy in the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 739-764, June.
    4. Kaiji Chen & Yi Wen, 2017. "The Great Housing Boom of China," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 73-114, April.
    5. Miao, Jianjun & Wang, Pengfei, 2014. "Sectoral bubbles, misallocation, and endogenous growth," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 153-163.
    6. Barro, Robert J, 1990. "Government Spending in a Simple Model of Endogenous Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 103-126, October.
    7. Óscar Arce & David López-Salido, 2011. "Housing Bubbles," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 212-241, January.
    8. Glomm, Gerhard & Ravikumar, B., 1994. "Public investment in infrastructure in a simple growth model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 1173-1187, November.
    9. Zheng Liu & Pengfei Wang & Tao Zha, 2013. "Land‐Price Dynamics and Macroeconomic Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(3), pages 1147-1184, May.
    10. Marco Bassetto, 2006. "Politics and Efficiency of Separating Capital and Ordinary Government Budgets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 121(4), pages 1167-1210.
    11. Chong-En Bai & Chang-Tai Hsieh & Yingyi Qian, 2006. "The Return to Capital in China," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 37(2), pages 61-102.
    12. Matteo Iacoviello & Stefano Neri, 2010. "Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from an Estimated DSGE Model," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 125-164, April.
    13. Tomohiro Hirano & Noriyuki Yanagawa, 2017. "Asset Bubbles, Endogenous Growth, and Financial Frictions," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 84(1), pages 406-443.
    14. Mo, Jiawei, 2018. "Land financing and economic growth: Evidence from Chinese counties," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 218-239.
    15. repec:oup:restud:v:84:y::i:1:p:406-443. is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Wu, Jing & Gyourko, Joseph & Deng, Yongheng, 2015. "Real estate collateral value and investment: The case of China," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 43-53.
    17. Davis, Morris A. & Heathcote, Jonathan, 2007. "The price and quantity of residential land in the United States," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2595-2620, November.
    18. Jianjun Miao & Pengfei Wang, 2018. "Asset Bubbles and Credit Constraints," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2590-2628, September.
    19. Baxter, Marianne & King, Robert G, 1993. "Fiscal Policy in General Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 315-334, June.
    20. Zheng Song & Kjetil Storesletten & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2011. "Growing Like China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 196-233, February.
    21. Chong-En Bai & Chang-Tai Hsieh & Zheng Michael Song, 2016. "The Long Shadow of a Fiscal Expansion," NBER Working Papers 22801, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Chen, Pu & Wang, Chunyang & Liu, Yangyan, 2015. "Real estate prices and firm borrowings: Micro evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 296-308.
    23. Philippe Weil, 1987. "Confidence and the Real Value of Money in an Overlapping Generations Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(1), pages 1-22.
    24. Tirole, Jean, 1985. "Asset Bubbles and Overlapping Generations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1499-1528, November.
    25. Jing Wu & Yongheng Deng & Hongyu Liu, 2014. "House Price Index Construction in the Nascent Housing Market: The Case of China," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 522-545, April.
    26. Pedro R.D. Bom & Jenny E. Ligthart, 2014. "What Have We Learned From Three Decades Of Research On The Productivity Of Public Capital?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 889-916, December.
    27. Miao, Jianjun & Wang, Pengfei & Zhou, Jing, 2015. "Asset bubbles, collateral, and policy analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(S), pages 57-70.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shenzhe Jiang & Jianjun Miao & Yuzhe Zhang, 2022. "China'S Housing Bubble, Infrastructure Investment, And Economic Growth," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(3), pages 1189-1237, August.
    2. Jia Pengfei & Lim King Yoong, 2021. "Tax Policy and Toxic Housing Bubbles in China," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 21(1), pages 151-183, January.
    3. Bo Zhao, 2015. "Rational housing bubble," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 60(1), pages 141-201, September.
    4. Dong, Feng & Liu, Jianfeng & Xu, Zhiwei & Zhao, Bo, 2021. "Flight to housing in China," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    5. Miao, Jianjun & Wang, Pengfei & Zhou, Jing, 2015. "Asset bubbles, collateral, and policy analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(S), pages 57-70.
    6. Hirano, Tomohiro & Toda, Alexis Akira, 2024. "Bubble economics," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 122042, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Gyourko, Joseph & Shen, Yang & Wu, Jing & Zhang, Rongjie, 2022. "Land finance in China: Analysis and review," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    8. Wang, Ren & Hou, Jie & He, Xiaobei, 2017. "Real estate price and heterogeneous investment behavior in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 271-280.
    9. Sicheng He, 2021. "Growth, innovation, credit constraints, and stock price bubbles," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 133(3), pages 239-269, August.
    10. Minetti, Raoul & Peng, Tao & Jiang, Tao, 2019. "Keeping up with the Zhangs and house price dynamics in China," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    11. Ran, Gao & Zixiang, Zhu & Jianhao, Lin, 2022. "Consumption–investment comovement and the dynamic impact of monetary policy uncertainty in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    12. Kaiji Chen & Yi Wen, 2017. "The Great Housing Boom of China," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 73-114, April.
    13. Guo, Zi-Yi, 2017. "Information heterogeneity, housing dynamics and the business cycle," EconStor Preprints 168561, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    14. Lambertini, Luisa & Mendicino, Caterina & Punzi, Maria Teresa, 2017. "Expectations-driven cycles in the housing market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 297-312.
    15. Lise Clain‐Chamosset‐Yvrard & Xavier Raurich & Thomas Seegmuller, 2023. "Are the Liquidity and Collateral Roles of Asset Bubbles Different?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(6), pages 1443-1473, September.
    16. Chenxi Wang, 2023. "Asset bubbles and frictional intermediation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(3), pages 921-961, October.
    17. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    18. Jianjun Miao & Pengfei Wang & Lifang Xu, 2016. "Stock market bubbles and unemployment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(2), pages 273-307, February.
    19. Jianjun Miao & Pengfei Wang & Jing Zhou, 2022. "Asset Bubbles and Foreign Interest Rate Shocks," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 44, pages 315-348, April.
    20. Graczyk, Andrew & Phan, Toan, 2021. "Regressive Welfare Effects Of Housing Bubbles," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(8), pages 2102-2127, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Housing Bubble; Infrastructure; Economic Growth; Chinese Economy; Property Tax;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • P24 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - National Income, Product, and Expenditure; Money; Inflation
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bos:wpaper:wp2020-005. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Program Coordinator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decbuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.