Abstract: The housing supply elasticity is related to the formation mechanism of housing prices and the stability of housing policy. It is the theoretical research focus to establish a long-term regulation mechanism of real estate in China.Studies have shown that government behavior is an important factor affecting the elasticity of housing supply. Local governments intervene into the housing market through land, and have two core intervention paths: controlling the amount of land transfer and controlling the type of land use. This paper selected the land supply elasticity and the proportion of bidding, auctioning and listing revenues in the total land revenue as 2 proxy variables and used 2012-2016 quarterly data of 34 large and medium-sized cities to make empirical tests, to prove that local government interventions will reduce the housing supply elasticity and lead to viscosity effects in the supply adjustment, thus causing a failure of regulation policies on the demand side. Therefore, it is quite necessary to change the objective function of local governments in the housing market by adjusting the government performance appraisal mechanism, improving local fiscal and taxation system, and upgrading the regional industrial structure, so as to provide an institutional basis for the establishment of a long-term real estate regulation mechanism.

Key words: housing supply elasticity, local government, real estate regulation