Due to rent control, the primary landlord-tenant dilemma prevents landlords from recovering costs of energy-efficiency retrofits, which mainly benefit tenants. This necessitates tenancy law to allocate retrofit and energy costs adequately. We analyze the impact of Germany's current system and...

Due to rent control, the primary landlord-tenant dilemma prevents landlords from recovering costs of energy-efficiency retrofits, which mainly benefit tenants. This necessitates tenancy law to allocate retrofit and energy costs adequately. We analyze the impact of Germany's current system and...

The rental building sector is plagued by the so-called landlord-tenant-dilemma, i.e. that landlords have no direct financial benefit from modernizations for energy efficiency if the tenant pays the energy bill while tenants have no incentives to save energy if the landlord pays. The primary...

The rental building sector is plagued by the so-called landlord-tenant-dilemma, i.e. that landlords have no direct financial benefit from modernizations for energy efficiency if the tenant pays the energy bill while tenants have no incentives to save energy if the landlord pays. The primary...

Housing cooperatives have a significant share in some countries, particularly in urban housing markets, and are supported by municipalities through tax breaks and preferential access to land. We examine the contribution of housing cooperatives to the provision of affordable housing and how they...

In the rental residential building stock, the landlord-tenant-dilemma is a well-known barrier to investments in energy efficiency and exacerbated where rent control limits the possibility to raise rents to finance landlords' investments. Some jurisdictions, like Germany, allow landlords to...

In the rental residential building stock, the landlord-tenant-dilemma is a well-known barrier to investments in energy efficiency and exacerbated where rent control limits the possibility to raise rents to finance landlords' investments. Some jurisdictions, like Germany, allow landlords to...

We empirically document that the effectiveness of the German rent control introduced in 2015 in achieving rental housing affordability is limited. Exploring the reasons for this limited effectiveness we focus on the impact of the rent control on the yield on rental housing investments proxied by...

Despite the consensus on the inefficiencies it creates in the housing market, rent stabilization is often advocated by tenant groups as a housing affordability policy. I show that contrary to usual belief, the main benefit of rent regulation for tenants is not the protection it provides against...

Concerns related to housing affordability are widespread in cities worldwide, and discussions about adopting rent control policies abound. This paper studies the effects of a rent control policy adopted in Catalonia in September 2020 that applies to some but not all municipalities. The policy...

Housing is one of the areas where it may be most critical for poor people to have access to legal representation in civil cases. We use the roll-out of New York City’s Universal Access to Counsel program (UA) to assess the effects of legal representation on tenant outcomes, using detailed...

Rent-control advocates argue that its strongest feature is offering tenants strong protections from economic displacement. Nonetheless, rent control may have negative effects on tenants, as previous research has shown that these tenants have longer commutes and higher unemployment rates because...

A common aim of rent control is to assist low-income households. We test the income-distributional effects of rent control with a novel dataset that includes characteristics of those who received rent-controlled apartments between 2011 and 2016 in central Stockholm, Sweden, through a centrally...

This study investigates the effects of short-lived rent control regulations introduced in Catalonia in September 2020 and revoked in March 2022. Using the microdata of the largest Spanish housing advertisement portal idealista between January 2017 and May 2022, we analyze the dynamics of prices...

Rent control policies seek to ensure affordable and stable housing for current tenants; however, they also increase the incentive for landlords to evict tenants since rents re-set when tenants leave. We exploit variation across zip codes in policy exposure to the 1994 rent control referendum in...

Rent control is a highly debated social policy that has been omnipresent since World War I. Since the 2010s, it is experiencing a true renaissance, for many cities and countries facing chronic housing shortages are desperately looking for solution, directing their attention to controling housing...

More than two million U.S. households have an eviction case filed against them each year. Policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels are increasingly pursuing policies to reduce the number of evictions, citing harm to tenants and high public expenditures related to home lessness. We...

This study investigates the effects of short-lived rent control regulations introduced in Catalonia in September 2020 and revoked in March 2022. Using the microdata of the largest Spanish housing advertisement portal idealista between January 2017 and May 2022, we analyze the dynamics of prices...

Housing is one of the areas where it may be most critical for poor people to have access to legal representation in civil cases. We study the roll-out of New York City's Universal Access to Counsel program (UA), using detailed address-level housing court data from 2016 to 2019. The program,...

We provide an in-depth study of short-term rental (STR) regulation in Chicago. While many municipalities choose between outright bans or laissez-faire strategies concerning STR activities, Chicago pioneered a middle-ground ordinance, enabling the market to exist with limitations and...

We conduct a representative survey experiment in Germany to understand why people support inefficient policies. In particular, we measure beliefs about and preferences for rent control -- a policy that is widely regarded as harmful by experts. To tease out causal mechanisms, we provide randomly...

Digital platforms are not only match-making intermediaries but also establish internal rules that govern all users in their ecosystems. To better understand the governing role of platforms, we study two Airbnb pro-guest rules that pertain to guest and host cancellations, using data on Airbnb and...

When the coronavirus pandemic struck, governments at all levels moved to help tenants in unprecedented ways. Though the policies were far from perfect, they were major steps forward. This Article examines those reforms. The eviction crisis predates 2020, but the pandemic made it worse. In...

Digital platforms are not only match-making intermediaries but also establish internal rules that govern all users in their ecosystems. To better understand the governing role of platforms, we study two Airbnb pro-guest rules that pertain to guest and host cancellations, using data on Airbnb and...

We conduct a representative survey experiment in Germany to understand why people support inefficient policies. In particular, we measure beliefs about and preferences for rent control - a policy that is widely regarded as harmful by experts. To tease out causal mechanisms, we provide randomly...

This paper aims to shed light onto the functionality of price regulation in the private rentalsector, critically evaluate various findings and impacts, both theoretical and empirical, provideexamples of past and recent regulations from all over the world, such as San Francisco,Massachusetts,...

Purpose The Recast Energy Efficiency Directive 2023 has defined the concept of “split incentive,” also known as “tenant-owner dilemma.” This dilemma refers to the situation where neither landlords nor tenants have incentives to invest in energy efficiency upgrades. Although the Energy...

Rent-control laws limiting the rents private landlords can charge tenants are controversial in the United States. Critics have condemned rent control’s mandated wealth transfer from landlords to tenants, and economists have decried its negative effects on rental supply and quality. With the...

We use state-level differences in the legal relationship between landlords and tenants to estimate the impact of these differences on housing markets. We construct a search-theoretic model of landlord and tenant search and matching, which predicts that an increase in the cost of eviction reduces...

The (re-)introduction of rent regulation in the form of rent controls, tenant protection or supply rationing is back on the agenda of policymakers in light of rent inflation in many global cities. While rent control as social policy promises short-term relief, economists point to their negative...

Following World War I, rent control became a standard policy response to the housing shortage and the resulting rent increases. Typically, economists blame it for creating inefficiencies in the housing market and beyond. We investigate whether rental market regulations (including rent control,...

Most economists believe that strict rent controls deter the production and maintenance of rental housing. In a Métropolitiques essay, Loïc Bonneval challenged this consensus. Bonneval claimed that France’s severe interwar rent controls had little effect on the profitability of real estate...