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2014 that figure was 54.4 percent (World Bank Indicators, 2015). As a result, China has gone on a rapid building spree. But, what makes Chinese skyscraper construction all the more interesting is that, unlike most Western countries, China does not have a free market in urban land. Urban land is generally owned by the respective municipal governments, and development rights are sold by the government. That is to say, the Chinese municipal governments offer ground leases for extended periods of time, such as

70 years, in exchange for ground rents. Municipal governments use the money collected to fund government operations and infrastructure investments. As such, they have a direct incentive to generate as much income as possible from ground leases. It is within this context that this paper explores skyscraper construction in China, with the goal of testing several hypotheses. This paper seeks to investigate how much of tall building frequencies and heights are driven by the underlying economic fundamentals versus other sociological and/or political factors. On the one hand, skyscrapers, because of their size and the quantity of resources needed to create them, can be used for additional purposes beyond simply housing economic activity. Skyscrapers can advertise to the world that a city is open for business. In addition, in China, the incentives for skyscraper building seem more dramatic given that municipal officials appear to have several motivations to promote them. First, as mentioned above, in order to have ample funds for public goods and infrastructure, Chinese municipal governments rely heavily on the sale of land use rights. Second, since rapid economic development is a priority for the Chinese government, the production of large-scale projects is a major focus for local officials (Yu, et al., 2016). Within this context, however, is the supply issue. Building space across cities is, presumably, substitutable;

as a result, if one city goes on a buildings spree, it will lower the price of building space and can potentially draw economic activity away from other cities, as it reduces the incentives to construct elsewhere. One aim of this paper is to test whether skyscrapers in China are strategic complements or strategic substitutes. A strategic complement is a good where one provider increases the amount produced as a response to a rival'

s production of the good. A strategic substitute is where a producer reduces production as the response to a rival'

s increased production (Barr, 2013). If skyscrapers in China are strategic complements, it suggests market players are trying to outdo each other to draw attention or resources to their respective cities. If they are strategic substitutes, then it suggests that the net effect of skyscraper construction is more firmly rooted in the fundamentals of supply and demand, since the market punishes those who overbuild for non-purely profit maximization purposes. To test these theories, data was collected on skyscraper construction in

74 cities throughout China from

1970 to 2014. Nearly all

100 meter buildings completed in mainland China (including Hong Kong) are included in the data set.1 As controls, data was collected on economic and political variables. Using this data set, several regressions were run to test for the degree to which skyscraper construction patterns are based on economic fundamentals versus the competitive desire to stand out or due to political reasons. The dependent variables of interest are the annual number of skyscraper completions 中国只有大约18.6%的人口居住在........