PRODUCTIVITY ASSESSMENT OF THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY IN CHINA: A TWO-STAGE MALMQUIST PRODUCTIVITY INDEX

Considering that the real estate industry is a critical industry to promote the economy in China, it is necessary to measure the real estate performance. However, few studies about the performance evaluation of China’s real estate industry have focused on the production process. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a two-stage framework to investigate the real estate productivity of 30 sample provinces on mainland China from 2008 to 2015, based on a common-weight global Malmquist productivity index (MPI). The major findings are shown as follows: (a) the real estate efficiency is low, and it is mainly caused by the inefficiency in the sales stage, not the development stage; (b) the development trend of the real estate sector in China is sensitive to the government policies, and the fluctuations of MPI are consistent with the direction of policy adjustment during the observation period; (c) as for the regional analysis of MPI, we introduce the concept of the dependence degree of the economy on the real estate industry and predict that MPI in economically underdeveloped regions may decline in the future. Finally, policy recommendations are provided for the high-quality development of China’s real estate industry.