The Theory Of Population Spatial Stratification From The Perspective Of Housing Prices

Since the Chinese economy enters the High-Quality Development stage,China's urbanization enters a new era.City mayors change their priority from restricting population quantity to upgrading workers' human capital,and housing policy is one of their most important policy tools.The first essay studies the spatial sorting of heterogenous workers by building a two-city-model(big city,small city)which emphasizes the differences between buying and renting houses.First,one cannot buy a fraction of an apartment,with the minimal lot size being 30 square meters,whereas it is legal to rent as few as 5 square meters of a house.Second,in China,home owners can enjoy extra city amenities than renters,such as better school districts.These are the causes of spatial sorting.The model suggests that when the housing supply is abundant,all workers are home owners,the distributions of workers are identical in both cities.As the housing supply decreases,houses are less affordable,low-skill workers become renters in the big city,middle-skill workers become home owners in the small city,and top-skill workers become home owners in the big city.The last sorting pattern is consistent with data.Home ownership also has great impact on individuals in the marriage market because of gender identity in China,which is a social belief that women have lower financial responsibilities for buying houses than men.47% women believe that finding a good husband is more important than finding a good job.Base on the gender identity in China,the second essay builds a two-period model with two cities(big city,small city).In the first period,workers choose which city to live and choose to become home owners or renters,which will affect their amenity and matching probabilities in the marriage market.In the second period,workers meet and match.Gender identity implies that male renters have lower matching probabilities than female renters.In order to raise their matching probabilities,men have higher incentives of becoming home owners,which engenders sex sorting across cities.For instance,there are less male renters in the big city than female renters,while the percentage of male home owners in the small city is higher than female home owners.This essay also suggests that an increase in male to female ratio will raise the housing prices in both cities;and raising land supply in big city can help alleviate the low marriage rate.Monetary policy also affects housing price.From the perspective of individual's housing demand,the third essay builds a two-period model with a credit constraint.The model suggests that monetary policy has asymmetric effects on housing price.By applying a non-linear regression models,this essay proves that a rise in the interest rate can dampen housing price only when the interest rate is above zero.