Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/191907 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
DIW Discussion Papers No. 1780
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
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 structural characteristics to construct a quality-adjusted rent price index in continuous time. We provide the first pre-war and pre-Soviet index based on market data for any Russian housing market. In 1915, one of the world's earliest rent control and tenant protection policies was introduced in response to soaring prices following the outbreak of World War I. We analyze the impact of this policy: while before the regulation rents were increasing at a similar rapid pace as other consumer prices, the policy reversed this trend. We find evidence for official compliance with the policy, document a rise in tenure duration and strongly increased rent affordability among workers after the introduction of the policy. We conclude that the immediate prelude to the October Revolution was indeed characterized by economic turmoil, but rent affordability and rising rents were no longer the dominating problems.
Subjects: 
Rental Market
Rent Regulation
Intra-Urban Rent Dynamics
Hedonic Rent Price Index
Economic History
Pre-Soviet Russia
October Revolution
JEL: 
C14
C43
N93
O18
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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