IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/rgscpp/v4y2012i4p393-417.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Housing policies in China: Issues and options

Author

Listed:
  • Yves Zenou

Abstract

This article consists in three parts. The first part deals with theory. We evaluate the pros and cons of government involvement in urban housing and of renting versus ownership. In the second part, we summarize the different housing policies that have been implemented in the United States, Europe, and Asia. We draw some conclusions. In particular, we show that there is a tradeoff between encouraging home ownership and social housing since countries that have favor the former have neglected the latter (like Japan, Spain, etc.). In the third part, we use the theory and the international policy parts to address housing policy issues in China. One of the main concerns in Chinese cities is the raise of poverty mainly by "illegal" migrants (who are Chinese rural residents) living in "urban villages". We propose two steps to fight against poverty in Chinese cities. The first one is to require that the Chinese government recognizes these "illegal" migrants by helping them becoming "legal". The second step is to encourage social housing that directly or indirectly subsidizes housing for the poor. In that case, to fight against poverty, one can either implement place-targeted policies (like the enterprise zone programs in the US and Europe and/or housing projects in the US, UK, or France) or people-targeted policies (like the MTO programs in the US). We also discuss other issues related to poverty. In particular, we suggest that the government could also try to keep migrants in rural areas by attracting firms there and/or introduce a microfinance system that helps them become entrepreneurs.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Yves Zenou, 2012. "Housing policies in China: Issues and options," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(4), pages 393-417, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:rgscpp:v:4:y:2012:i:4:p:393-417
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/rsp3.2012.4.issue-4
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zenou, Yves, 2011. "Search, migration, and urban land use: The case of transportation policies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 174-187, November.
    2. Giulietti, Corrado & Wahba, Jackline & Zenou, Yves, 2018. "Strong versus weak ties in migration," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 111-137.
    3. Dreger, Christian & Zhang, Yanqun, 2010. "Is there a bubble in the Chinese housing market?," Discussion Papers 290, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Department of Business Administration and Economics.
    4. Song, Yan & Zenou, Yves, 2012. "Urban villages and housing values in China," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 495-505.
    5. Qianwei Ying & Danglun Luo & Jie Chen, 2013. "The Determinants of Homeownership Affordability among the ‘Sandwich Class’: Empirical Findings from Guangzhou, China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(9), pages 1870-1888, July.
    6. Seong-Kyu Ha, 2013. "Housing markets and government intervention in East Asian countries," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 32-45, March.
    7. Liao, Wen-Chi & Wang, Xizhu, 2012. "Hedonic house prices and spatial quantile regression," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 16-27.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    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:bla:rgscpp:v:4:y:2012:i:4:p:393-417. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1757-7802 .

    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.