Assessing the impacts of pandemic and the increase in minimum down payment rate on Shanghai housing prices

In 2016, the city of Shanghai increased the minimum down payment rate requirement for purchasing various types of properties. We study the treatment effect of this major policy change on Shanghai’s housing market by employing panel data from March 2009 to December 2021. Since the observed data are either in the form of no treatment or under the treatment but before and after the outbreak of COVID-19, we use the panel data approach suggested by Hsiao et al. (J Appl Econ, 27(5):705–740, 2012) to estimate the treatment effects and a time-series approach to disentangle the treatment effects and the effects of the pandemic. The results suggest that the average treatment effect on the housing price index of Shanghai over 36 months after the treatment is [Formula: see text]8.17%. For time periods after the outbreak of the pandemic, we find no significant impact of the pandemic on the real estate price indices between 2020 and 2021.