房价升高促使中国家庭更多地“加杠杆”吗——基于购房动机异质性视角的研究

Does Rising House Price Push China’s Households to “Leverage Up” More? A Study Based on the Research Perspective of Heterogeneity of House-Purchase Motivation

近年来我国家庭部门杠杆率的快速上升引发了较大关注,高房价可能是导致这一现象的重要原因。家庭不同的购房动机是否起到了推动作用?研究这个问题对理解家庭杠杆形成机制以及实施精准的住房政策具有重要意义。本文的理论分析认为,若购房的投机性动机比较明显,那么房价升高就会使得非首套房家庭的杠杆增加程度超过首套房家庭。为此,我们采用2016年某国有银行70个大中城市全部居民住房按揭贷款数据进行了实证检验,并通过工具变量法和双重差分法分别从城市间和城市内两个维度对两类家庭进行了比较,结果表明,房价升高确实促使非首套房家庭的债务余额和杠杆率增加程度显著超过首套房家庭。本文研究进一步发现,在所购房产没有明显实质差别的情况下,房价升高促使非首套房家庭更倾向于极致利用房贷政策,这证明其更多地"加杠杆"行为背后存在明显的投机性。因此,为平抑家庭部门杠杆率的过快增长,在调控房价升高预期的同时,应重点加强对非首套房家庭购房的信贷约束,限制其过度投机行为。

Recently,the rapid rise of leverage in China’s household sector has caused great concern,and the rapid rise in housing prices may be an important reason.Do the different house-purchase motivations play a driving role in it?Pondering this question is important to understand the household leverage formation mechanism and implement effective housing policy.According to the theoretical analysis of this paper,if the speculative motive of house purchase is obvious,the rise of housing price will make the leverage of non-first-house(NFH)households increase more than that of first-house(FH)households.Based on this understanding,we used a state-owned bank’s housing mortgage data across 70 large and medium-sized cities in 2016 to make empirical estimates,and used the IV and DID methods to compare the two types of households in the two dimensions of between-cities and within-cities respectively.The results showed that the housing price rise does drive up the debt and leverage ratio of the NFH households more than in the case of the FH households.Furthermore,we found that the rise of housing price has prompted the NFH households to be more inclined to make the most use of mortgage policies with no substantial housing difference.These all have verified that there is obvious speculation behind their"leverage up"behavior.Therefore,in order to curb the excessive growth of leverage in the household sector,while regulating the expectations of rising house prices,we must focus on strengthening credit constraints on non-first housing buyers and limiting their excessive speculation.