Title: Understanding the Risk of China’s Local Government Debts and Its Linkage with Property Markets

Speaker: Yongheng Deng, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Time: November 24th, 2018 15:00–16:30

Venue: Conference Room 106B, Zhonghui Building (IESR, JNU College of Economics)

About the speaker:

Yongheng Deng is a Professor and the John P. Morgridge Distinguished Chair in Business, in the Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin–Madison. H has also been appointed as a Professor at the University of Southern California (USC), School of Policy, Planning and Development, and the Marshall School of Business. He was an Economist and Expert in the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) – a financial regulator overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in Washington DC. While Yongheng Deng’s primary research interest is evaluating conditions in Asian and China’s real estate and housing markets, his research pertains to a wide variety of issues in real estate finance and urban economics worldwide, including real estate capital market and asset-backed security pricing and risk analysis, econometric analysis of competing risks of mortgage prepayment and default with unobserved heterogeneity.

Abstract:

The intertwining of local Chinese housing markets with government fiscal policies is the direct result of China’s recent economic growth and fiscal reforms that have forced local governments to rely on land sales to fund infrastructure projects via a unique funding mechanism known as Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFVs). We study the linkage between the solvency of LGFV debt and local housing market risk. Our results show that in areas with higher expected house price growth LGFVs issue debt with lower risk premiums. However, in contrast to concerns about excessive local government debt being fueled by surging property prices, we show that LGFVs do not take advantage of this pattern by issuing more bonds during the booming period of housing markets.