On June 18, 2019, IESR founded the Center for Real Estate and Regional Economics with Professor Yongheng Deng appointed as the Honorary Director. 

The center aims to become an internationalized research platform that will seize the opportunity of the construction of Greater Bay Area to cultivate high-level research talents and to produce outstanding academic results within the field of real estate. The center will closely combine real estate research with regional economics and macroeconomics, cooperate with government and various enterprises, and will actively promote real estate transformation and development. The center will strive to become one of the leading real estate think tanks in China and Southeast Asia by providing local businesses and government with research-based support that will help explore industrial development and will contribute in solving key social problems.

Center for Real Estate and Regional Economics has the following goals:

–   Regularly organize high-level academic events and policy forums at home and abroad;

–  Actively engage in different exchanges with academia, government, and various enterprises; promote in-depth cooperation with them;

–  Introduce a number of distinguished foreign scholars to become one of the special-term professors here at the center; enhance the overall talent training;

– Strengthen cooperation with related national and provincial departments, such as Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the PRC;

–  Conduct a series of surveys on regional economy, real estate and household finance.

Yongheng Deng and IESR Dean Shuaizhang Feng at the launch and inaugural ceremony of the center

Yongheng Deng is currently a Professor and the John P. Morgridge Distinguished Chair in Business at the Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin – Madison, and he is also a member of World Economic Forum's Advisory Board on Future of Urban Development. Yongheng Deng’s main research areas are in real estate finance and urban economics, including China’s housing market risks and housing price analysis, China’s urban development, green finance, sustainable development, and also the governance and research of financial markets. Professor Deng has published  in leading economics and finance journals such as Econometrica, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Finance, and Journal of Urban Economics. Over the years, he has been very active in academia both in North America and in China, and has a rich experience in interdisciplinary cooperation.