While high-speed rail (HSR) investments in China are largely funded by the central government, their localized benefits often accrue to city governments. To examine how this mismatch shapes city financing behavior, we implement a difference-in-differences (DID) analysis using a comprehensive city–year panel dataset that includes HSR infrastructure, 3.69 billion individual HSR ticket sales records, and detailed information on Chengtou bonds (CTBs) issuance and outstanding balances. We find that HSR operation significantly increases CTBs issuance, with stronger effects associated with HSR passenger flows than with HSR mileage; in cities with higher land prices, greater population density, and higher fiscal openness; and for trunk HSR lines as well as bonds issued by HSR-related entities. However, this effect raises city governments’ debt-to-GDP and debt service ratios, particularly in less developed western regions, heightening local debt risks. These findings highlight the need for coordinated transport and fiscal policies to ensure sustainable infrastructure investments.

This study employs a difference-in-difference (DID) regression to estimate the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on city-level household carbon dioxide emissions across various consumption categories. The DID analysis is based on a sample of 179 Chinese cities during 2010-2018, and reveals a positive association between HSR and household carbon dioxide emissions. The findings suggest that cities with HSR emit more carbon dioxide due to increased daily consumption, and this effect grows over time. The mechanism analysis shows that the development of HSR stimulates household income growth, leading to increased consumption-based carbon dioxide in cities with HSR. Despite being considered a green transportation mode with a low carbon footprint, this research highlights potential environmental burdens associated with HSR, emphasizing the need for sustainable HSR development and environmental management policies.

Using data from Chinese prefecture-level cities between 2006 and 2020, this study presents new causal evidence to the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship, showing that research and development expenditures of listed firms significantly promote new business formation in the same city. We address endogeneity issues, account for alternative mechanisms, and consider knowledge spillover from mature firms to entrepreneurs as a plausible explanation. Consistent with this explanation, the effect is more pronounced in innovation-driven entrepreneurship and knowledge-intensive industries, and diminishes with distance. Furthermore, cities with a favourable business environment, particularly with increased government services for enterprises, exhibit more prominent effects.

The complex interactions among multiple service providers pose challenges to the delivery of community care for older people. Through the lens of the welfare pluralism theory, this study provides the first understanding of older people’s decisions regarding informal/community care under complex interactions among the government, enterprises, communities, and families. Based on a survey of older people in 2883 corresponding families and 184 communities in China, we utilize a logit regression to empirically examine the factors that influence older people’s care decisions, as identified by an equilibrium model. We find that government subsidies and local wage levels effectively promote older people’s decisions to utilize community care. We highlight the importance of governments’ direct care provisions in promoting aging in place and efforts to mitigate regional inequalities for older people.

Kinship networks play an important role in sharing risk under insufficient social security. We examine the heterogeneous risk-sharing networks and their impacts on household finance. Based on a staggered DID design, we find that households under negative shocks obtain a larger extent of social capital from extended family members with blood ties and geo-proximities, similar income positions, and lower uncertainty exposures. The vehicles of risk-sharing differ across networks, and direct monetary transfers over quasi-credits are facilitated by altruism and social norms. However, over-reliance on risk-sharing networks reduces willingness to engage in life-cycle financial planning and dampens long-term financial performance.

This paper investigates how intermediaries with information advantages divert consumers' search in rental markets and lead to inefficient outcomes. Using unique data on tenants' initial preferences, property-showing sequences, and transaction records, we find that agents present suboptimal properties as the first option in property-showing sequences. Leveraging such door-in-the-face tactics, agents further guide tenants' choices through sequential adjustments. These diversion strategies are robust to exogenous shocks, market variations, and platform externalities. Such search diversion is a dominant strategy through which intermediaries benefit from an increasing transaction success rate, and transaction acceleration and increased transaction prices of suboptimal properties. However, search diversion leads to rental contracts offering unsatisfactory prices and quality, resulting in perceived utility losses for the diverted tenants, subjecting tenants to discrimination.

As technology increasingly shapes consumer interactions, this paper explores the transformative impact of Virtual Reality (VR) technology on consumer service within the housing sector. Utilizing a unique dataset from 2017 to 2021 in Beijing, this paper finds that VR significantly enhances consumer service efficiency by expediting transactions and increasing the conversion rate during offline housing viewings. This improvement addresses information opacity in housing transactions, reducing costs and offering an alternative to traditional real estate agent involvement. Additionally, VR improves service quality by identifying properties that closely align with consumers' initial preferences and contributes to an upward trend in property purchase prices. These findings offer implications for managers to prioritize VR investments in suitable properties and enhance staff competencies, and for researchers to provide cost-effective solutions for enhanced service delivery.

In this paper, we study consumer search in a housing market subject to objective frictions induced by intermediaries and psychological frictions intrinsic to tenants themselves. Using rental data from a leading real estate brokerage company during 2016 and 2018, we find a unimodal distribution of objective search frictions and a bimodal distribution of psychological search frictions revealed by tenants' search behaviors. This bimodal distribution originates from divergent search strategies of tenants with different search criteria. Furthermore, psychological search frictions explain the deviation between a tenant's actual choice and stated preference, and enhance the degree of overpay/mark-up in the deal. These effects of psychological frictions led by divergent search strategies hold when we consider the expertise/incentive of agents and the rigidity/opportunity cost of tenants' search. Aggregately, psychological search frictions result in a dispersed and asymmetric distribution of rent residuals.

This paper investigates the role of Virtual Reality (VR) in transforming consumer behavior within the housing sales process, focusing on how VR changes consumer preferences and willingness to pay. The study explores three key questions, including the influence of VR-provided online information on offline information searches, the impact of extensive VR information on consumer willingness to pay, and the capitalization of VR's effects into market prices. Using a unique dataset covering online housing information, offline property viewings, and sales transactions, the paper examines the complex two-stage information search process. Findings highlight that the incremental information and signals from VR increase consumer search priorities, increase willingness to pay and ultimately push transaction prices higher than preferences. This research contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between VR technology, consumer behavior, and market dynamics, illustrating how VR can improve service delivery and create a more efficient housing sales process.

This study examines the investment behaviour of Hong Kong-based real estate firms in Mainland China. Using a sample of individual land transactions, we find that firms with higher value of growth options, as perceived in the capital market, are more likely to invest actively and further away from their home base. However, over time, Hong Kong developers tend to decrease their level of activity in Mainland China, indicating that the ‘liability of foreignness’ becomes a significant challenge. Our findings highlight the importance of balancing strategic expansion with the inherent risks of operating in distant emerging markets.