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Demand for Urban Quality of Living in China: Evolution in Compensating Land-Rent and Wage-Rate Differentials

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  • Siqi Zheng
  • Yuming Fu
  • Hongyu Liu

Abstract

The rapid pace of urbanization and income growth in China in the past decade, spurred in part by the liberalization of the urban housing and labor markets, resulted in considerable growth in urban land rents and wage-rates. The objective of this study is to examine the influence of urban quality of living, comprising social and environmental amenities, on the evolution of cross-city land-rent and wage-rate differentials in China. We employ the household data from the 1998 and 2004 Urban Household Survey (UHS) to compute the intercity land-rent and wage-rate differentials, inferring the rent growth in individual cities from a household housing consumption demand equation as home values were not reported in the earlier UHS. Our findings show a strong increase of urban residents’ willingness to pay for local amenity qualities between 1998 and 2004. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Suggested Citation

  • Siqi Zheng & Yuming Fu & Hongyu Liu, 2009. "Demand for Urban Quality of Living in China: Evolution in Compensating Land-Rent and Wage-Rate Differentials," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 194-213, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jrefec:v:38:y:2009:i:3:p:194-213
    DOI: 10.1007/s11146-008-9152-0
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