Stay Hungry, and Stay Calm in Upbeat Time: Local Leaders' Early-Life Famine Experience and Housing Sector Development in China

Abstract

This paper shows that local officials' personal preferences formed through early-life experience affects Chinese housing sector development. We exploit a county-level panel between 2000 and 2007 and use the Great Famine in 1959–1961 in China as a natural experiment. Our specification exploits the spatial variation in the early-life exposure to the famine, and shows that local officials' early-life exposure to more severe famine leads to significantly less development in the housing sector in their jurisdictions. Our findings remain robust to alternative specifications, placebo tests, and competing hypotheses. Furthermore, we employ satellite nightlight data to show that the early-life famine experience of local officials is negatively correlated with the extent of statistical data manipulation, indicating changing risk attitudes due to early-life famine experiences.