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Sharp increase in house prices combined with the extraordinary Chinese lending growth during 2009 has led to concerns of an emerging real estate bubble. We find that, for China as a whole, the current levels of house prices do not seem significantly higher than would be justified by underlying fundamentals. However, there are signs of overvaluation in some cities’ mass-market and luxury segments. Unlike advanced economies before 2007-8, prices have tended to correct frequently in China.Given persistently low real interest rates, lack of alternative investment and mortgage-to-GDP trend, rapid property price growth in China has, and will continue to have,a structural driver.
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Little is known about the total factor productivity of the nontradable sectors in China. In this paper we estimate productivity growth of the nontradable sectors by studying the relative price movements of the nontradable sectors vis-à-vis the tradable sectors, i.e. changes in the internal real exchange rate. We find that prices of the nontradable sectors have risen significantly faster than those of the tradable sectors since China's accession to the WTO, and as a result China's internal real exchange rate has appreciated faster than the renminbi real effective exchange rate. We also find that the nontradable sectors have seen much lower productivity growth than the tradable sectors. We argue that it is important to raise China's productivity growth in the nontradable sectors through policy actions to achieve growth rebalancing and containing inflationary pressures in the medium run.
In this paper, we study how labour market developments have affected labour costs in China. We find labour market tightness, and hence labour migration, have some impact on the labour costs of HMT firms and private enterprises, but the overall impact is limited. It appears there is no absolute shortage of labour, but there is skill and education mismatch in labour market. As such, it is necessary to remove the barriers to labour migration, and upgrade production chains to reduce labour market distortion.