Essays on the Housing Market in China and Some Evidence on Inflation Targeting

The housing market in China enjoys great prosperity after a continuously rapid development for more than a decade. However, there are growing concerns about possible bubbles as the price continues to rise while ordinary workers cannot afford a house. The government of China has implemented different kinds of regulations to slow rapid price increases and stabilize the market since 2007. The first paper looks at the characteristics and determinants of housing prices in different tiers of cities in China over the period 2002–2017, and then the second paper examines the impact of different types of regulations on the real estate price and trading volume using monthly data from Jan 2008 to Dec 2017. Empirical results demonstrate that housing price increase cannot be well explained in terms of fundamental factors in all 3 city tiers. Heterogeneity is found in regulation effects in different city tiers and most of the government interventions are not effective on housing price or trading volumes. Fundamental factors and regulations work dramatically different in Tier 1 cities versus Tier 2 &3 cities. The difference between Tier 2 and Tier 3 is smaller. The third paper examines the treatment effects of inflation targeting (IT) on inflation and output growth over the period of 1980–2020, based on annual data of 20 Latin American countries. A variety of estimating methods are considered and regression results indicate no evidence that inflation targeting helps to lower inflation or stabilize the GDP growth rate in 10 Latin American emerging markets