The unintended housing-market effects of School Admission Restrictions: evidence from Shanghai, China

We examine the impact of Shanghai’s School Admission Restriction Policy on housing prices and its underlying mechanisms. The policy restricts each household to using a given address for the enrolment of only one child in a public school within a five-year period. Using transaction-level housing data from Shanghai spanning 2011–2024, we employ a hedonic pricing framework combined with a boundary discontinuity design to estimate the policy’s effect. Contrary to its intended goal, we find that the policy’s announcement is associated with a 1–2% increase in housing prices, potentially driven by increased public attention. Consistent with this mechanism, we document a significant increase in Baidu news counts for affected communities, suggesting heightened market awareness.