Land Use Regulation,Housing Supply Elasticity And Urban Growth In China

Since the implementation of the housing system reform in China in 1998,the proportion of the real estate industry in the national economy has been increasing year by year,and the housing price has also risen at a high speed,especially since 2003,which has attracted great attention of the whole society.Although the government has made great efforts to promote the reform of housing supply side and achieved initial results,which has cooled down the overheated situation of the real estate market,the excessive growth of housing prices is still one of the core problems plaguing the current Chinese economy.In order to comprehensively explore the root of the problem of excessive growth of housing prices,in-depth consideration of the supply side is indispensable,and compared with the demand side,the impact of the supply side on housing prices is more critical.So,is the overall housing supply in Chinese cities inelastic? Is there a significant difference in housing supply elasticity between different cities? What are the important factors that restrict the elasticity of urban housing supply in China? What are the economic and welfare effects of urban land use regulation?For these policy-oriented issues,it is not only the concern of the government,but also a very important topic in scientific research that needs to be answered urgently.It is necessary to explain the reasons for China’s high housing prices from the perspective of housing supply,although the existing literature has not paid enough attention to it.The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China once again reiterated the view that“houses are for living,not for speculation”,emphasizing that the housing system to be established in the next step needs to speed up multi-subject supply,which explains that the mechanism of supply-side reform playing a key role in controlling housing prices has been highly valued by the government.Academics urgently need to do basic research on observing the current housing supply reality in Chinese cities from a theoretical point of view,so as to help predict how the housing market will respond to future demand shocks.In-depth study of housing supply in China can not only better understand the differences in housing supply between cities and the spatial distribution of corresponding economic activities,but also evaluate the effectiveness of government housing and land policies.In view of this,this paper first takes the regulation of residential floor area ratio as the representative,uses the micro-land transaction plot data and POI data to comprehensively measure the intensity of urban land use regulation in China,and then,in the fourth chapter,from the specific perspective of local officials’ change,examines the causes affecting urban residential land use regulation;Then,in Chapter 5,we estimate the housing supply elasticity in China using the identification strategy of demand changes caused by exogenous shocks.Finally,in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7,we focus on the assessment of the impact of land use regulation on urban economic growth and social welfare.Through the above research,the main conclusions of this paper include:(1)The housing supply elasticity of each city in China ranges from 0.477 to 1.763,with an average value of 0.817,indicating that the housing supply is inelastic on the whole,while there is significant heterogeneity among different cities;the larger the population size of a city,the smaller the housing supply elasticity,and the higher the degree of physical and geographical constraints.The difference of housing supply elasticity helps to explain the different degree of housing price change from the supply side,and the above results provide a new perspective to explain the typical fact that China’s current housing prices are rising significantly as a whole,especially in big cities.(2)Natural geographical constraints and land use regulation are important reasons for the lack of flexibility in housing supply.Physical geography constraints not only determine the area of developable land in the region,but also determine the upper limit of land resources that can be used for development by the local government in the administrative division,thereby reducing the elasticity of housing supply;volume ratio regulation restricts the elasticity of urban housing supply by restricting the number of housing development on unit land.At the same time,it is found that the change of local officials will affect the setting of the statutory volume rate regulation,and when the local officials change,the volume rate limit will rise.(3)Land use regulation has a significant impact on urban economic growth and the overall social and economic welfare.Strong land use regulation will inhibit economic growth by hindering the growth of urban labor force scale and promoting the outward spread of urban spatial structure.The negative effect of land use regulation on economic growth is more intense in cities with larger population and higher proportion of manufacturing sector;Relaxation of land use regulation in first-tier and second-tier cities can improve the economic welfare of the whole society,and according to the different goal orientation of maximizing total welfare or total output,there are differences in optimizing the path of land use regulation and housing supply in different regions.If the housing supply in first-tier cities is increased alone,it will help to maximize the total output of the whole country;If the housing supply of the second-tier star cities is properly increased,it will be more conducive to the optimization of the total social welfare.Finally,this paper combines the conclusions of the study with the path of new urbanization,and concludes that China needs to moderately relax the regulation of floor area ratio and improve the elasticity of housing supply as a whole,so as to provide theoretical reference for the healthy and sustainable development of urban housing market.At the same time,we should shift from economic efficiency-oriented to people’s well-being oriented,and increase the housing supply of first-and second-tier cities,especially second-tier star cities in the overall spatial layout,which provides a theoretical reference for the construction and governance of “people’s cities” in the new era.