Steve Keen did the great service of reading the FCIC report and confirming my impression (obtained without reading it) that it was not worth reading. And a few posts prior, he reported that Wendell Cox and friends are out with another edition of their annual Demographia report, showing, once again, that the ratio of house cost to income tends to be higher in metropolitan areas where housing development is relatively restricted, and lower where developers find it relatively easy to get clearance to build. (Their report is international in scope but I will limit my comments to their analysis of US conditions.) Continue reading Housing costs and land use regulation