Local Government Debt, Land Use Efficiency and Housing Prices: Empirical Evidences Based on Panel Data from 255 Cities
Wang Weian1, Xie Zhubin1, Chen Mengtao2
1.School of Economics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China 2.School of Finance, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou 310018, China
Abstract：Over the past 20 years, the trend of real estate prices has shown complex and variable characteristics. Until before the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s real estate market had been in a state of “easy heat and difficult cooling”. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that by the end of 2020, the average selling price of commercial housing nationwide had reached 10,030 yuan per square meter, an increase of 323% compared with the price of 2,359 yuan per square meter at the end of 2003. The price increase in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen has exceeded tenfold. Against this background, it is necessary for us to trace the changes in real estate prices and explore the specific mechanisms behind their formation.After the global financial crisis in 2008, many studies have proposed factors influencing the high real estate prices in China, such as speculative demand, social interaction, and financial liberalization. The mainstream literature focusing on the supply side mainly revolves around the relationship between local government debt and housing prices. However, most existing studies primarily investigate the impact of real estate prices on the scale of local government debt rather than the causal relationship between them. Even the studies that do examine this relationship only focus on the overall effect of local government debt on housing prices. Local government debt is the primary source of the fiscal revenue for local governments under the fiscal decentralization system. Studying only its overall effect on real estate prices without exploring the influence of urban characteristics on this mechanism makes it difficult to provide more practical policy recommendations. Moreover, real estate risk and local government debt risk are two sides of the same coin in China’s systemic risks, representing the central axis of financial and fiscal linkage risks. Therefore, further tracing the correlation between the two and clarifying their mechanisms is essential to meet the requirements of the “guarding against systemic risks” in the 20th National Congress report.This article takes the land channel as a framework to delve into the mechanism by which local government debt affects housing prices and the moderating effect of land use efficiency on this mechanism. We construct a three-sector equilibrium model involving households, real estate developers, and governments. We decompose the positive effect of local government debt on housing prices into direct and indirect effects and infer that land use efficiency can weaken the positive stimulation of local government debt on housing prices through indirect effects. Additionally, we test these two inferences using panel data from 255 cities from 2011 to 2019, where land use efficiency is calculated using the Super-SBM DEA model with unexpected output. To mitigate endogeneity and reverse causality problems, we employ 2SLS and SYS-GMM models for testing. Furthermore, we find that in cities with low levels of digital economy and high dependence on land finance, the positive stimulation of local government debt on housing prices is more significant, and the negative moderating effect of land use efficiency on this stimulation is stronger. These conclusions provide theoretical and empirical support for accelerating the replacement of local government debt, improving land use efficiency according to local conditions, and preventing and resolving real estate risks in China.
王维安, 谢朱斌, 陈梦涛. 地方政府债务、土地利用效率与房价[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2024, 54(4): 37-54.
Wang Weian, Xie Zhubin, Chen Mengtao. Local Government Debt, Land Use Efficiency and Housing Prices: Empirical Evidences Based on Panel Data from 255 Cities. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2024, 54(4): 37-54.
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