The supply elasticity and housing price bubbles in New South Wales, Australia

In this study, we use a supply and demand model to estimate housing supply elasticity in New South Wales Australia based on yearly data for the 126 local government areas from 1991 to 2019, and investigate effects of supply elasticity on responses of housing prices and new constructions to housing price bubbles from 2002 to 2004. In particular, when conducting supply elasticity estimation, we use multi-factor error structures to address cross-sectional dependence issues, which is ignored by previous studies. We find that the supply elasticity estimates are statistically significant at the state level (0.36), in the regional coastal area (0.97) and in the regional inland area (0.41 but can be inconsistent and inefficient due to cross-sectional dependence), while perfectly inelastic in the metropolitan area. Effects of supply elasticity on the market responses to bubbles are largely affected by market heterogeneity such as overall supply elasticity levels and demand degrees. The findings may compensate for the limitations of the theory in Glaeser et al. (2008, J Urban Econ, 64:198-217) and offer potential avenues for future development of the theory. Our results implies that bubbles promote development in elastic areas of the metropolitan market and inelastic areas of the regional coastal market, and that balancing urban and regional development is important for dealing with bubble-related affordability issues.