Housing Price and Population Growth across China: The Role of Housing Supply

In this article, we employ a spatial equilibrium growth model to empirically examine the role of housing supply growth in differences in housing price and population growth across the provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, and major cities of mainland China for 2002-2015. Areas in the East, particularly Shanghai, Ningbo, Qingdao, and Xiamen, are found to have had the least growth in housing supply, while autonomous regions and areas in the Southwest and Northeast had the most. The differences in housing supply growth are shown not only to have greatly influenced relative housing price growth, but they also greatly influenced relative regional population growth, suggesting that land and housing supply policies are a critical component of regional growth in China.