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Using a comprehensive data set of housing transactions in Beijing, China, we find that government officials are more likely than non‐officials to buy housing units before the government‐imposed housing purchase restriction policy. We also find that officials use their power to speed up the loan application process and pay higher prices to complete the transactions before the policy. Overall, the results suggest that officials trade on private information gained during the policymaking process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a unique data set of adjustable‐rate mortgages in China to investigate the effect of interest rate changes on mortgage curtailments. A distributed lag model shows that on average, the cumulative curtailment over four months increases by about RMB 1,856 in response to a 1 percentage point increase in interest rates. Further analyses show that the degree of responsiveness of mortgage curtailments depends on the direction of the interest rate changes: curtailments are more responsive to interest rate increases than to decreases. We also find significant heterogeneity in borrowers' curtailment responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on precautionary saving motives, this research develops a three-period life-cycle model to manifest the impact of housing prices on household savings in urban China. The theoretical model illustrates that the expected appreciation of housing prices at a household's middle age leads to the increase in household savings at a household's young age. Second, household savings at a household's young age are positively associated with both expected educational and medical expenditures in a household's middle age and pension expenditures at a household's old age. Third, the expected housing prices crowd out educational and medical expenditures at a household's middle age. With the panel data sets of China's 31 provinces during 1996–2016, results suggest that the expected housing prices significantly interact with the current household savings. However, the influence of the expected housing prices on the current household savings is greater than that of the current household savings on the expected housing prices. Third, the expected expenditures of education, medical care and pension fuel up the current household savings. Meanwhile, the housing prices crowd out the expenditures of education, medical care and pension. Finally, data of the Urban Household Survey (UHS) over the period 2002–2007 show that the household head age has an effect of reverse U-shape on household savings. Accordingly, to prevent a housing bubble and promote household consumption, policy makers should curb housing price inflation by enacting appropriate countercyclical housing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]