摘要
China s real estate has been a key engine of its sustained economic expansion.This paper argues,however,that even before the COVID-19 shock,a decades-long housing boom had given rise to severe price misalignments and regional supply-demand mismatches,making an adjustment both necessary and inevitable.We make use of newly available and updated data sources to analyze supply-demand conditions in the fast-moving Chinese economy.The imbalances are then compared to benchmarks from other economies.We conclude that the real estate sector is quite vulnerable to a sustained aggregate growth shock,such as COVID-19 might pose.In our baseline calibration,using input-output tables and taking account of the very large footprint of housing construction and real estate related sectors,the adjustment to a decline in housing activity can easily trim a cumulative 5-10 percent from the level of output over a period of years.
