Lecture Information

Topic: Housing Market Signals and Social Mobility Beliefs

Speaker: Assistant Professor Yeow Hwee Chua from Nanyang Technological University

Host: Associate Professor Zhang Yu from RIEM

Time: March 24th (Tuesday) 10:00-11:30

Location: Conference Room 1211, Gezhi Building, Liulin Campus

Speaker's Profile

Yeow Hwee Chua is an assistant professor of economics and deputy director of the Economic Growth Centre at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is also an honorary secretary of the Singapore Economic Society and a member of the Consumer Association Strategy Committee.

He received a First-Class Honors Bachelor's degree in Economics from the National University of Singapore in 2008, a Master's degree in Economics from the London School of Economics in 2014, and a PhD in Economics from the National University of Singapore in 2021.

His research focuses on household finance, behavioral macroeconomics, and expectations. He has published multiple papers in internationally renowned journals such as Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, and China Finance Review International. He has also led multiple research funding projects and written multiple policy reports for the Singapore government.

Abstract

This lecture will delve into how Singapore's real estate market signals shape people's expectations of social mobility. The research team conducted a carefully designed survey experiment to exogenously regulate the changes in housing prices and housing policy information that respondents were exposed to, and carefully observed the impact of this information on the future liquidity expectations of both ends of the income distribution.

The experimental results show that the rise in housing prices and housing taxes significantly weaken people's confidence in upward mobility for low-income groups, while expectations for mobility for high-income groups are almost unaffected. On the contrary, the decline in housing prices and housing subsidies have little effect on liquidity perception. This unique response pattern reveals that people's evaluation of economic opportunities is not solely based on symmetrical information updates of housing affordability, but is deeply influenced by the expected formation characteristics of reference dependence.