The Value of a City and Its House Price:An Empirical Study across 35 Chinese Cities
利用中国35个城市的数据，检验了城市经济增速和生活质量等价值变量对房价差异的解释力，发现人们愿意为高收入和高宜居性支付更高房价，且过去被低估的城市便利性正推动房价上涨。
In China, the increasing labor mobility across cities makes it possible for people to choose which city to stay in. Such a labor re-distribution across cities pushes house price to converge to its long-term equilibrium level determined by the value of city, including city economic growth and quality of living. This paper does an empirical test using the house price and amenity data in 35 Chinese cities. The results show that the city value variables can explain a large part of the variation of house price across cities. Cities with higher labor income and higher quality of living always have higher house prices, which means that people would like to pay higher living cost (house price) to stay in a city to pursue higher income or higher quality of living. We also find that many urban amenities were undervalued in the past, and the convergence process towards their equilibrium levels will lead to house price growth. The income premium is decreasing, while urban amenity premium is increasing in house price, which indicates that people's willingness-to-pay for the natural environment in a city and the local public serviced provided by city government.