Advertising and Natural Vacancies in Rental Housing Markets
构建模型解释住房供需匹配滞后导致的空置期，发现即使竞争市场中自然空置率也无法为零，房东通过广告影响空置时长但投资效率低下，为公共政策干预提供依据。
We formulate a model that explains vacancy durations arising from lags in matches between the suppliers and demanders of housing units. We emphasize rental housing markets in this exposition although the model could be extended to competitive or noncompetitive rental or home‐ownership markets. In the case of rental markets, if tenants do not immediately inform landlords upon initiating search for a new unit, landlords are delayed in their search for a new tenant. These matching delays induce a positive natural vacancy rate that cannot be reduced to zero, even in competitive markets. Price‐taking landlords are, however, able to affect the resulting vacancy duration through advertising in a Cournot‐Nash equilibrium and will, in general, invest in inefficient levels of advertising. As a consequence, there may be a role for public policy to provide incentives that would induce noncooperative landlords to choose the vacancy cost‐minimizing advertising solution.