Novel evidence on the asymmetric causality between the Chinese stock and real estate markets: evidence from city-level data

Abstract

Our study re-examines the asymmetric causality between the Chinese stock and real estate markets in 70 cities. Prior research using symmetry hypotheses, has not yet linked these two markets or paid attention to their heterogeneity. We uniquely employed the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model, which permits the exploration of bidirectional asymmetric causality. Decreases and increases in stock prices caused short-run changes to real estate prices in 18 of the cities studied; this short-run effect was ultimately carried on in Guangzhou and in three cities. Even after switching the study variables, similar results were obtained. Our findings show that real estate policymakers in specific cities need to take into consideration the asymmetric performance of real estate prices as caused by the asymmetry within stock prices. If government stabilises the real estate market, it can in turn facilitate stock-market stability.