Spatial-Temporal Changes of Housing Bubbles in China¡¯s Major Cities: 1999 to 2012

Existing literature is characterized by certain deficiencies in measuring housing bubbles in China. By extending the analytical framework of Black et al. (2006) to a spatial panel VAR structure, this paper measures housing bubbles in China¡¯s 35 major cities from 1999Q2 to 2012Q3 and analyzes the spatial-temporal changes of the housing bubbles in these cities. Results indicate that 1) changes to housing bubbles in most cities highly correspond with changes in the main real estate policies of the country and 2) housing bubbles in eastern developed cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Ningbo, have been relatively large in recent years although the average housing bubble is not very serious over the 35 major cities. Through the Kernel Density Function and local indicators of spatial autocorrelation analysis, this paper finds that housing bubbles are concentrated in several eastern developed cities. Based on empirical analysis, this paper proposes policy recommendations on inhibiting the expansion and diffusion of housing bubbles.