Saturday, July 26, 2008

Mark Thoma thinks housing supply elasticities may be assymetric

The basic point is that in markets with lots of land, housing may be supplied elastically during booms, but takes a long-time to adjust during price declines. I have reason to think Mark is right.

My 2005 paper with Mayo and Malpezzi found evidence of this; cities that appeared inelastic included Pittsburgh, Toledo, Albany, Buffalo and Providence. None of these cities had upward pressure on housing production; rather, they were losing population and the housing stock took a long time to adjust to the loss.

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