Does “hot money” drive China's real estate and stock markets?

The paper investigates the extent of the impact from “hot money” or speculative capital inflow on the fluctuations of China's real estate market and stock market. The results indicate that hot money has driven up property prices as well as contributed to the accelerating volatilities in both markets due to its enormous size and its short-term characteristic of investing. In particular, we find that hot money ranks as the second largest contributor in the fluctuations of China's real estate prices. In the “risky” regime, which corresponds to more inflows and higher volatility of hot money, the effects are even more prominent.