Housing reform in urban China has introduced market mechanisms into a previously welfare-oriented housing system. Although microlevel factors such as household characteristics begin to shape housing behavior in urban China as is the case in the West, macrolevel constraints and opportunities defined by not only housing stocks and housing markets but also local government behaviors continue to be...

This study compares the relative efficacy of centralized versus decentralized governance of national road services delivery, both theoretically and empirically. National roads are normally governed by the central government due to their functional importance as major arteries. Of the major functions of national road governance comprising planning, financing, construction and maintenance, the Mi...

Governance is broader notion than government. It involves governments but also civil society (citizens, civic institutions, etc). In the urban management context, governance refers to all the laws, regulations, frameworks systems and processes that shape the way in which the local government operates. These frameworks, processes and systems may be formal or informal. The formal governance struc...

The use of Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) to monitor the performance of 148 English local authorities (unitary and two-tier) between 2002 and 2008, and reward good performers with lower central intervention was a unique policy experiment. Taking advantage from the English assessment procedure this paper studies, both theoretically and empirically, two issues: 1) the relationship bet...

Issued by local government financing vehicles and backed mostly by land sales, Chengtou bonds are an important source of financing for Chinese local governments. We identify large heterogeneity in Chengtou bond yields, which is not supposed to exist since they are implicitly guaranteed by the central government. We find that corruption in China has a significant effect on local government credi...