To Build Outward or Upward: The Spatial Pattern of Urban Land Development in China

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主讲人	Zhi Wang	简介	<p>This paper attempts to understand the patterns of urban land development in China from the political economy perspective. Our study is motivated by an interesting pattern observed in the past decade that in the initially more densely populated cities the urban land development was expanded more outwardly with a relatively low use intensity. We link this pattern with the career concerns of Chinese city leaders who pursue faster GDP growth and generate more fiscal revenues by expanding the city outwardly. We first develop a theoretical model to demonstrate how a city leader with career concerns chooses the spatial pattern of urban land development and derive several testable predications. First, city leaders with high career incentives are more likely to expand the city outward. The underlying mechanism that drives this is that by doing so the city leader can generate more land sale revenues for financing public infrastructure, which in turn enhances the economic performance and her career prospect. Secondly, the average use intensity of newly developed land is lower for city leaders with higher career incentive due to the existence of a mechanical trade-off between a city&rsquo;s upward and outward expansion.Then we test these theoretical predictions using a large dataset on residential land transactions from 2000 to 2012 which are matched with the personal characteristics of city leaders during the same time period. We find robust evidence consistent with the predictions of our model. Our study highlights the important role of city leaders in shaping the unique patterns of urban land development in China.&nbsp;</p>
时间	2016-09-22(Thursday)16:40-18:00	地点	N303, Econ Building
讲座语言	English	主办单位	WISE & SOE
承办单位		类型	系列讲座
联系人信息		主持人	Mouhua Liao
专题网站		专题
主讲人简介	<p>Assistant Professor, School of Economics, Fudan University</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><a href="/Upload/File/2016/9/20160912114636402.pdf"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255);"><strong><u>Prof. Zhi Wang's CV</u></strong></span></a></p>	期数	“WISE-SOE”高级经济学系列讲座2016秋季学期第一讲（总第366讲）

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