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...

Vor dem Hintergrund nahezu kontinuierlich steigender Mietpreise in den angespannten Wohnungsmärken in den letzten zwölf Jahren ist es gerade in Zeiten zunehmender finanzieller Belastungen für die privaten Haushalte mehr als nachvollziehbar, dass die Politik preisdämpfende Maßnahmen...

Rent control is a highly debated social policy that has been omnipresent since World War I. Since 2010s, it has been experiencing a true renaissance, for many cities and countries facing housing shortage are desperately looking for solutions of the chronic housing shortage and direct their...

Over the course of the 20th century, governments have frequently used rent control to keep rents affordable, especially in times of crisis when housing is scarce. Existing research shows that rent control has undesirable side effects, such as overall societal welfare losses, market...

This research considers the international evidence on the functioning and deployment of measures similar to the Irish "Rent Pressure Zone" (RPZ) framework introduced in late 2016. It also considers how these measures have worked in Ireland in the period from their inception until prior to the...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

We study the effect of rent stabilization in NYC on tenant unemployment from 2002 to 2017. We show rent stabilization increases tenants’ unemployment by six percentage points, more than double the average unemployment rate during the study period. Moreover, the effect is concentrated in...

We show that pro-tenant rent control laws increase the rural-urban wage gap by reducing rural-urban migration in India. Migrants are more likely to rent when they move to cities. Rent control laws reduce the supply of rental housing, thereby increasing the costs of migration to cities....

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...

Die Frage nach geeigneten Maßnahmen zur Bekämpfung unerwünschter Entwicklungen auf dem Wohnungsmarkt beschäftigt die Menschen nicht nur im Wahlkampf. Abhilfe schaffen keinesfalls weitere Eingriffe in die Preisfindung und das Eigentumsrecht wie Mietenstopp, Mietendeckel oder Enteignung. Diese...

The long-run U-shaped patterns of economic inequality are standardly explained by basic economic trends (Piketty’s rg), taxation policies, or “great levelers,” like catastrophes. This paper argues that housing policy, in particular rent control, is a neglected explanatory factor in...

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...

The textbook graphical analysis of price control (see Figure 1) is inappropriate any time there is substantial consumer heterogeneity. In cases such as rental apartments, where one unit is usually the maximum bought per customer, and the downward slope of the demand function comes exclusively...

When there are binding price controls, there are shortages and the allocation of goods across consumers may not be efficient. In general, the misallocation costs of price controls are first order, while the classic welfare losses due to undersupply are second order. This paper presents an...

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,...

Die Situation des deutschen Mietwohnungsmarkts wird aktuell gesellschaftlich breit diskutiert. Ein Nachfrageüberhang, der sich vorwiegend auf urbane Räume konzentriert, hat in den letzten Jahren zu einem deutlichen Anstieg der Mieten geführt. Da die Einwohner in Deutschland überwiegend...

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,...

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,...

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 homelessness. We...

We use the price effects caused by the passage of rent control in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2021, to study the transfer of wealth across income groups. First, we find that rent control caused property values to fall by 6-7%, for an aggregate loss of $1.6 billion. A calibrated model of house prices...

This paper studies market segmentation that arises from the introduction of a price ceiling in the market for rental housing. When part of the market faces rent control, theory predicts an increase of free-market rents, a consequence of misallocation of households to housing units. We study a...

This paper evaluates the rent control policy implemented in Germany in 2015. Like many countries around the world, German cities and metropolitan areas have experienced a strong increase in rental prices during the last decade. In response, the politicians aimed to dampen the rise in rental...

This article studies the evolution of housing rents in St. Petersburg between 1880 and 1917, covering an eventful period of Russian and world history. We collect and digitize over 5,000 rental advertisements from a local newspaper, which we use together with geo-coded addresses and detailed...