Mingzhi Hu

• PhD
• Associate Professor at Zhejiang University of Technology

With prices soaring in Chinese superstar cities (i.e., Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen), housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable. This paper investigates whether housing unaffordability crowds out elites in Chinese superstar cities. Using both micro- and macro-level data from China’s Urban Household Survey and China Statistical Year...

The 1994-1998 housing reform in China allowed state employees to buy their rented public houses at considerably subsidized prices. By exploiting housing reform as an exogenous change in homeownership and employing a differences-in-differences framework, this paper examines the effect of housing reform on labor market participation. Using the data f...

Immigrants came from different countries exhibit a high diversity in self-employment rates, making it vital to identify the sources of this diversity. Drawing on the linguistic relativity theory and imprinting theory, we argue that the future-time reference of home-country language is a key source, as it forms an imprinting on an immigrant of how t...

This paper examines the effect of financial literacy on mortgage stress. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we find that borrowers with high levels of financial literacy are over 60 percent less likely to suffer from mortgage stress than borrowers with low levels of financial literacy after controlling for observables. Our f...

This research addresses the impact of the remarkable rise in populism on innovative new ventures. Integrating institutional theory with gender role congruity theory, we reason that the surge of populist discourse by a nation's top political leaders decreases the innovativeness of new ventures, and this negative relationship is more pronounced for w...

Maternity leave for women has been substantially extended in China since the 2016 maternity leave reform, but maternity leave length varies greatly across regions. On the one hand, women are more likely to engage in employment due to extended maternity leave. On the other hand, extended maternity leave can increase the discrimination against women...

Demographic challenges, such as population decline, aging, and low fertility rates, have gained significant policy and scholarly attention. This is particularly evident in China, given its large and aging population with a total fertility rate falling well below the replacement level. This study investigates the influence of migrant parents on the...

Leveraging a quasi-natural experimental framework that designates Hubei province as the treatment group and other provinces as the control group, this study utilizes a difference-in-differences method to analyze the pandemic’s causal effects on entrepreneurship in China. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey and the China Statistical Ye...

As land becomes detached from its social function and market speculation intensifies, housing prices tend to rise, rendering homeownership less affordable. Following the escalation of property values, gentrification is often observed as wealthier individuals and investors are attracted to neighborhoods that offer good amenities and potential return...

Through an analysis of the Chinese labor-force dynamics survey (CLDS) data, our study investigates the relationship between broadband infrastructure and happiness among rural households. By leveraging the “Rural BROADBAND” project as an exogenous shock for broadband infrastructure and employing a difference-in-differences (DID) framework, we find t...

China’s vast uneven development between rural and urban areas and the deregulation of population movements are associated with a large-scale rural-to-urban migration, some of whom buy houses in their destination cities. This study examines how owning a house affects the settlement intentions of rural migrants in their destination cities. Using data...

Purpose This study investigates the potential association between corporate digitization and disclosure quality, and how this relationship is moderated by non-state ownership and institutional environment. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on signaling theory and factors that affect disclosure quality, the authors developed a framework to study...

The issue of land financialization has received considerable critical attention, with the literature focusing on the definition and process of land financialization and its contribution to urban development. This paper draws upon the capitalist spatial production theory to explore how the ongoing financialization process in the land market is relat...

Despite extensive research on the impact of various factors on entrepreneurship, the role of housing debt remains underexplored, particularly in emerging economies. Using data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this study identifies a significant negative effect of housing debt on entrepreneurship after controlling for a comprehensive...

Clean air policy is an important mechanism for improving the urban environment and promoting green economic development. Green total factor productivity (GTFP) is an important way to measure these impacts. We apply the super-efficiency slack-based measure model, considering undesirable output, and the Global Malmquist-Luenberger index to measure th...

In this study, we investigate how geographic proximity to industrial services provided by cities across the urban hierarchy contributes to differences in land prices of nearby towns. We construct three urban hierarchy tiers for cities in China based on their administrative levels. Using over 78,000 transaction data on the transfer of the land-use r...

Existing research suggests that housing demolition negatively affects labour supply through the wealth effect of the demolition compensation. However, there is limited research on the gender differences in the impact of housing demolition on labour force participation. This study investigates the effects of housing demolition on labour force partic...

This paper utilizes data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) and the digital economy index at the city level to empirically examine the impact of the digital economy on migrants' settlement intention. The results reveal a substantial enhancement in migrants' settlement intention due to the digital economy, and these findings remain robust...

This paper analyzes how housing prices affect innovation and entrepreneurship. We construct a city-level panel dataset including 281 cities between 2009 and 2019 by merging housing price data from China Statistical Yearbook for Regional Economy with innovation and entrepreneurship data from Peking University Open Research Data Platform. Our results...

Using data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper provides new evidence on the impact of rural land transfer on urban settlement intentions of rural migrants. There was a rural land system reform in rural China that provided increased compensation for rural land expropriation and allowed the transaction of collective construction land f...

A substantial body of literature on the promotion of socioeconomic mobility has focused on the role played by government support and human capital investment. However, homeownership as a channel for upward socioeconomic mobility has been under-researched. Using data from a self-conducted survey in 2021 on migrant young adults in China's five supers...

The economic and social benefits of homeownership are well documented in the literature. This paper examines whether homeowners are more likely to have charitable donations. Using data from Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we find strong evidence that homeowners on average are 8.86 percentage points more likely to have charitable donations th...

Considering that housing is the single biggest asset for most households, owning a home may create barriers to entrepreneurship for young people who generally accumulate relatively little wealth due to a short-term career and low income. Using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey, our empirical work suggests that home...

This study examines the effects of housing difficulties on life satisfaction. By using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies survey, we find strong evidence that households who experience housing difficulties are less satisfied with their lives than those who do not after controlling for a wide range of household demographic and soc...

This paper examines whether there is a housing disparity between homeowners and renters. Using data from the Chinese Urban Household Survey, we find that homeowners on average have much higher housing quality than renters after controlling for household characteristics, regional factors, location, and time fixed effects, and such disparity increase...

Considerable attention has been paid to the role of homeownership in affecting individuals’ subjective wellbeing in previous literature. This study focuses on renters and examines the heterogeneity of the association between rental housing from different sources and individuals’ subjective wellbeing using data from a self-conducted survey on housin...

This paper investigates how land redevelopment is associated with a city's potential to attract migrants. Based on empirical analysis conducted by using over one million records of land transaction data between 2008 and 2018 in Chinese cities, we observe that cities with a larger ratio of redevelopment land in the total area of land supply on avera...

A huge gap remains in the urbanization rate between China and developed countries, although China has experienced rapid growth in urbanization rate in the last decade. Critical to the future growth of urbanization is how to increase the settlement intentions of migrants. This study uses land supply for security housing as an exogeneous shock to the...

Chinese local officials have strong incentives to stimulate economic growth in the pursuit of promotion. However, the connection between promotion pressure of local officials and investment in the real estate market has not been rigorously explored. By using the panel data of local leaders (municipal party secretaries or mayors) from 2002 to 2010,...

This study examines how homeownership is associated with fertility intentions among migrant population in urban China. Using data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, after controlling for a wide range of household demographical and socioeconomic characteristics and city fixed effects, we find that homeowners are on average 1.12 percentage point...

In the rapid urban transformation era, housing demolition has posed risk towards non-market value such as life satisfaction of residents in line with most of previous literatures. However, our empirical work shows that households with demolition of their homes do not necessarily have negative life satisfaction by drawing from a sample of 9173 house...

Culture and derivative institutions affect household wealth, consumption, and property rights and ownership. Cultural factors also influence the role children play in determining household consumption and wealth accumulation, including acquisition of real property. The present study extends research on these influences by focusing on cultural norms...

Education Elites (i.e, higher-educated people) with new ideas and technologies are widely acknowledged to be a source of innovation and the engine of regional economic growth. A city that can attract higher-educated people will ultimately become the winner of the future. This paper examines whether city amenities attract higher-educated people. Usi...

Gift expenses escalated in China in the last decades with rapid economic growth and account for a substantial share of household expenditures. Rising gift expenses signal good friendships and facilitate reciprocity, which may enhance one's subjective wellbeing. However, increasing gift giving may also exacerbate the financial burden of households a...

Smart city is a recent concept that has progressed considerably. However, studies on changes induced by smart city development have been lacking. To date, the association of environmental pollution with smart city construction is purely hypothetical without any direct evidence. Effect of smart city construction on environmental pollution is innovat...

A previously undocumented association between city-level degree of hukou-based labor market discrimination and migrant’s individual entrepreneurship engagement is examined. Applying the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition analysis on the micro data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) suggests that hukou-based labor market discrimination can on a...

Human capital theory suggests that investment in education may generate marriage market returns. However, high expectations for potential marital partners by highly educated individuals, coupled with the huge cost of marriage driven by soaring housing prices in China, may discourage marriage intentions of highly educated people. Using the data from...

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, this work examines the relationship between housing price and the probability of marriage among the young. By exploiting land reform as an exogenous change in housing price and employing a differences-in-differences framework, this study investigates the effects of housing price on the marriag...

The effect of children on household wealth and consumption patterns in China is investigated. Chinese cultural norms including indulgent care of single children, a strong preference for sons, increasing competition in the marriage market and the importance of homeownership in marriage suggest that the number, gender and age of children may impact a...

This study examines the homeownership effect on the likelihood of marriage. Benefits brought by homeownership are highlighted in existing research. Specifically, owning a house may increase one's attractiveness in the marriage market. Therefore, homeowners more likely get married than renters. We test this hypothesis by comparing the marriage rate...

This study examines the relationship between housing quality and individuals’ subjective well‐being. Using data from the China Labor‐force Dynamic Survey (CLDS), results show that housing quality is associated positively with one’s overall happiness. Moreover, the results are robust to potential omitted variable bias. In addition, we determine that...

Impacts on consumer spending in urban China associated with housing value, housing equity, financial assets, and household income are evaluated using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey. Findings suggest that the housing wealth effect on household consumption in China is much larger than has been shown for developed...

This study examines the relationship between home ownership status and individual subjective wellbeing in urban China. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey, this study finds that home ownership is positively associated with one’s overall happiness, which is consistent with previous findings reported in the literature. Importantly, we f...

We examine how entrepreneurship among migrants in urban China is affected by household composition. Using micro data from the 2016 Chinese Labor-force Dynamics Survey, we find that after controlling for observables and regional fixed effects, the probability of entrepreneurship increases by 1.4 percentage points for a one-unit increase in the numbe...

In this study, we investigate the benefits of reducing airport noise externalities based on a natural quasi-experiment on exogenous variation in aircraft noise from the relocated Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport in 1998. We collect housing transaction data from 1993–2006 in residential areas near this airport and employ the difference-in-difference method...

Housing prices have been soaring in China since the past decade. Rising housing prices indicate good opportunities in the labor and housing markets, which can discourage the entrepreneurial investment decisions of would-be entrepreneurs. However, high appreciation in housing prices can also relax credit constraints in setting up nascent businesses...

Individuals who spend a large percentage of their incomes on consumption are perceived to prefer risks. Since entrepreneurs are well recognized as risk-takers, this chapter investigates whether consumption propensity is associated with entrepreneurship. Using micro-level data from Chinese Household Income Project, we find that households with a hig...

We applied an institutional perspective lens to examining the relationship between corruption and entrepreneurship. Our results suggest that corruption plays an informal but legitimate institutional channel in facilitating entrepreneurship in sub-national regions with underdeveloped formal institutions. However, we also find the positive relationsh...

This paper highlights a previously undocumented observation regarding the heterogeneity of the association between entrepreneurship and homeownership across ownership through different pathways. Our empirical work based on large individual-level microdata from China’s Urban Household Survey (UHS) suggests that, while owners of market housing do not...

Impacts on the probability of transition to entrepreneurship in rural China associated with the utilization of information communication technology (ICT) are estimated using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey. We identify cell phone ownership and Internet use as proxy variables for ICT utilization and find that cell...

The extant literature provided mixed findings on the relationship between corruption and entrepreneurship activities in national level. Integrating institutional-based view and transaction cost theory, we argue that corruption plays an informal institution channel to facilitate entrepreneur in sub-national regions with the imperfect formal institut...

It is well recognized that weather variations have effects on investors' mood, which can in turn make them behave irrationally. Behavioral finance theory also suggests that, to some extent, relevant weather conditions may induce anomalies in stock market. In addition, numerous documents have certified that there is a close relation between weather...

China's reform and opening up has entered a new stage of building a moderately prosperous society, developing socialism with Chinese characteristics and building an innovative country. However, in the process of reform and opening up, there have been many unavoidable problems. In the first decade of the new century, some contradictions hidden in Ch...

The quality of food services is a hot topic on college campuses across the globe. It has a substantial influence on student retention. Positive campus dining experiences can enhance campus food service as an integrated part of student life and contribute to overall student retention efforts. However, up to now, there are few literatures with refere...