Housing Preferences of Temporary Migrants in Urban China in the wake of Gradual Hukou Reform: A Case Study of Shenzhen

In the wake of the recent announcement by the State Council concerning the provision of public rental housing across China, and the gradual reform of China's household registration system (hukou), this article explores how potential adjustments in government housing policies (namely access to public rental housing) influence the housing preferences of temporary migrants who are currently residing inside the chengzhongcun (urban villages) of Shenzhen. The results indicate that dissatisfaction with rental cost and living conditions in these urban villages are the key reasons for migrants wishing to move into public rental housing if it is offered to them — and not the fact that they are treated differently within the hukou system. Public rental housing is welcomed in particular by newly arriving migrants who live outside the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ), and migrants who have decided to remain in Shenzhen for the foreseeable future. By contrast, dissatisfaction with urban villages is the sole contributor to housing preferences for those residing inside the SEZ.     

Rental prices in Germany: A comparison between migrants and natives

This paper deals with the question of whether migrants pay a rent premium for apartments of comparable quality and neighborhood characteristics. We use a two-step selection-correction model augmented by a control function to account for nonrandom neighborhood choice. The estimation sample is a uniquely assembled panel comprising the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), information on household and apartment characteristics, as well as georeferenced data describing neighborhood quality. Our estimates reveal that people with migration backgrounds are not penalized in the German local rental market in terms of higher rental payments.     

城市家庭住房不平等:户籍、禀赋还是城市特征？——基于广义有序模型与Oaxaca-Blinder分解

基于中国劳动力动态调查（CLDS）数据，运用广义有序Logit模型实证分析户籍、家庭禀赋和城市特征三类因素对城市家庭住房不平等的影响；运用夏普利值分解、Oaxaca-Blinder分解区分"努力"和"环境"因素、户籍歧视和禀赋效应的贡献。研究发现：户籍可解释住房等级不平等的54.2%；"努力"因素对住房水平起正向作用；在户籍间住房等级不平等中户籍歧视效应占主导，在住房面积不平等中禀赋效应占主导，外地户口居民住房水平低源于"环境"因素趋弱，农业户口居民则源于"努力"和"环境"因素叠加趋弱；由于生活成本效应占主导，城市规模和流动人口占比越大，居民住房等级趋低，而城市土地供给增长有助于提升住房水平。     

Social housing in France: A permanent and multifaceted challenge for public policies

This paper examines the dynamics of the overwhelmingly generous social housing in France that covers a wide spectrum of recipients. Being influenced by electoral power of rotating ruling parties and social ideals, policy formulations are often reflected by idealistic politics which tends to over-stretch the nation’s budget and restrict its scope in reaching its target groups. From the 1990s, fund availability has been further hit by economic globalization causing falling business profitability and high unemployment rates affecting notably ethnic minorities. Upcoming social crisis has been met with public response via a series of technical-led remedial acts to promote social integration in housing and by identifying social ills and polarization in sensitive and problematic urban quarters. New technical and financial measures in coping with the complexity and magnitude of social housing are expected to remain highly challenging in the French parliamentary politics.     

发达国家住房福利政策的演变及启示——我国公租房领域供给侧结构性改革探析

我国公租房领域存在投资主体单一、政府财政压力大、市场参与度不够、配置低效、供需失衡及错配、贫富分区程度加大等问题，需通过推进供给侧结构性改革来予以解决。发达国家住房福利政策的演变表明，住房政策应与住房市场供需状况相适应，政府所扮演的角色须从“公共住房的直接供给者”走向“市场化供给的环境营造者”，即从“补砖头”到“补人头”是住房福利政策演进的必然趋势。我国公租房领域供给侧结构性改革应与住房供求情况相匹配。一方面，要转变政府职能，从政府实物配给逐步过渡到市场化供给；另一方面，要积极打造健康的住宅租赁投资市场以促进公租房供给市场化，并通过开发配建和货币化补贴等措施促成公租房“隐形化”混合居住模式。     

Canada's Housing Bubble Story: Mortgage Securitization,the State,and the Global Financial Crisis

Canada's experience during and after the financial crisis appears to distinguish it from its international peers. Canadian real estate sales and values experienced record increases since the global financial crisis emerged in 2008, rather than declines, and Canada did not witness any bank failures. The dominant trope concerning Canada's financial and housing markets is that they are sound, prudent, appropriately regulated and ‘boring but effective’. It is widely assumed that Canadian banks did not need, nor receive, a ‘bailout’, that mortgage lending standards remained high, and that the securitization of mortgages was not widespread. The truth, however, does not accord with this mainstream view. In fact, the Canadian financial and housing markets reveal marked similarities with their international peers. Canada's banks needed, and received, a substantial ‘bailout’, while federal policies before and after the financial crisis resulted in the massive growth of mortgage securitization and record household indebtedness. This article documents the growth of Canada's housing bubble, the history of mortgage securitization, and of government policies implemented before and after the crisis. Instead of making the Canadian financial and housing sectors more resilient and sustainable, the outcomes of state responses are best understood as regressively redistributive.     

Why do commercial banks hold government bonds? The case of Japan

We investigate the determinants of the demand for Japanese government bonds (JGBs) by commercial banks in Japan. In particular, by estimating portfolio equations for JGB demand and bank loans, based on a panel data set from the late 1990s to the 2000s, we rigorously test the popular assertion that the long stagnation of the real economy caused a shift in the portfolios of commercial banks from bank lending to JGBs. We find that the popular assertion is not empirically supported. Rather, the portfolio shift from loans to JGBs has been caused by a fall in the ratio of the loan rate to unit lending costs, or the bank’s price–cost margin for lending.     

Floor-level premiums in private housing: the case of condominiums in Singapore

Using a sample consists of 3367 actual condominium sales transacted in resale market from May 2012 to April 2015 from the Singapore Urban and Redevelopment Authority, a hedonic pricing model is used to investigate for the presence of floor-level premiums in the private housing market, condominium, in District 23 of Singapore. Unit size, types of land tenure and the distance to the nearest mass rapid transit (MRT) station are also used as other independent variables. The estimated coefficient of each of these independent variables is statistically significant. Each of these independent variables also has positive estimated coefficient, suggesting that they have positive effects on condominium resale prices. Main findings are (a) there is a presence of floor-level premium; (b) the condominiums with a distance more than 400 m to the MRT station get higher resale prices; and (c) there is an increasing effect of floor level on condominium price.     

论税法中公平原则的时间效应--以房产税为例

税法中的公平分为短期公平和长期公平，以房产税法为例，满足短期公平未必不是对长期公平的扭曲。由于我国一直以来存在的土地制度、城镇住房结构以及地区发展不平衡等因素均能在时间效应上影响到房产税的长期公平，因此房产税改革是一个非常综合和复杂的事项，必须将多项因素纳入考虑的范围，以实现税法的长期公平。     

Financialization of Housing in Brazil: New Frontiers

The financialization of housing has been increasingly identified as an important driver of social and economic change in contemporary capitalism. Focusing on the Brazilian context, this article considers the extent to which recent changes in housing regulations, policies and markets confirm or challenge narratives about the financialization of housing in the international academic debate. I argue that while many of the trends stressed in the literature are apparent, more extreme processes of financialization within the Brazilian housing sector remain limited––not only because of institutional and regulatory constraints, path dependence or political resistance, but also because of fundamental structural conditions of Brazil's position as a peripheral economy. Three different but mutually reinforcing processes are scrutinized in order to evaluate the financialization of housing and its limits in Brazil: the re‐regulation of the real estate financial sector initiated in the 1990s; the changing funding patterns among real estate companies since the mid‐2000s; and the increasing commodification of housing induced by a large‐scale and heavily subsidized housing program launched in 2009.