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by no_wizard 457 days ago
They don’t though not really. We didn’t allow housing to have the same elastic market fluctuations all other markets do.

Yes, there can be minor variations in prices (especially with renting) but the fact of the matter is unlike any other market there is artificial scarcity up and down the chain with real estate

1 comments

> there is artificial scarcity up and down the chain with real estate

Which, according to this analysis, does not actually significantly affect prices relative to other factors.

I understand your theory and I intuitively don't find it "wrong" per se, but you're staring at an analysis that shows you otherwise. Your critique of it not factoring in things like policy is explicitly wrong: all of those factors are fully accounted for in the ultimate supply elasticity.

So if policy is accounted for (it is), and your theory doesn't hold, it's time to either come up with a different critique of the study or acknowledge it as clear evidence against your theory.

It accounts for them in as so far as acknowledging their existence and assigns them limited scope.

What this paper misses is the behavioral economic aspects that these regulations promote, or more importantly do not promote.

They can see the trees but are missing the forest.

No, those policies only matter, definitionally, in so far as they actually affect the elasticity of supply. The elasticity of supply is what they measured and found it does not matter, ergo those policies (and all related hypothetical supply-elasticity-affecting forces) effectively do not matter relative to other factors (well, one factor in particular: income).