THE EFFECT OF HOUSE PRICE ON FERTILITY: EVIDENCE FROM HONG KONG

"This article extends a standard Beckerian model of fertility behavior to formulate the effect of house price (HP) on fertility. The simple model predicts a negative effect of HP on the number of children for a representative household not only through the income effect but also through the compensated substitution effect. The prediction is confirmed by a cointegration analysis applied to the annual data at the aggregate level covering the period from 1971 to 2005 in Hong Kong. It is found that a 1% increase in HP is significantly related to a 0.45% decrease in total fertility rates (TFRs), which is robust in sensitivity tests with an alternative model specification and alternative measures of TFRs. This implies that high HP inflation can account for about 65% of the fertility decrease in Hong Kong in the past four decades." ("JEL" J13, J11, C32) Copyright (c) 2009 Western Economic Association International.

Multilevel governance in the cross-boundary region of Hong Kong: Pearl River Delta, China

Multilevel governance (MLG) has been extensively applied to elucidate the dispersion of decisionmaking across multiple levels of governments—supranational, national, and subnational in the European Union (EU) and its member states. In this paper I attempt to contribute to the literature through the case of Hong Kong (HK) and the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in China. I argue that a pattern of MLG has been emerging since the early 2000s in this subnational-level cross-boundary region, accompanied by the gradual institutionalization of economic integration between Hong Kong and the PRD. Decisionmaking competencies in the HK – PRD cross-boundary region have tended to disperse across multiple levels of governments ranging from the central, Guangdong Provincial, HK Special Administrative Region, to municipal, city, and county level of the PRD, as well as businesses and residents on both sides of the boundary. In response to the lack of an effective regional authority and the unique political framework of ‘one country, two systems’, central government has played a somewhat backstage coordinator role in the transition of the integration mechanism and cross-boundary governance. Previous explanations of the integration and governance of the HK – PRD cross-boundary region need to be reevaluated. A regional level authority, similar to the supranational institutions in the EU, is urgently required to foster and upgrade cross-boundary cooperation