Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/300813 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
DIW Discussion Papers No. 2094
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
Urban areas confront a chronic shortage of housing, especially in the low-rent segment. This precarious situation is further exacerbated by major challenges, like the destruction of housing by wars and natural catastrophes, rapid increase of demand, or pandemics cutting incomes. In response, the authorities implement rent control that slows rent increases or even freezes rents. Rent control is ubiquitous, widely used at a large scale since World War I. However, its roots lie in a far more remote past, the first documented examples stemming from the Ancient Rome. Despite social and technological differences between then and now, the solutions found more than 2000 years ago bear a striking similarity with modern policies. Rapidly rising property prices, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Ukrainian war pushed rent control back to the top of the political agenda. In this study, using logit model and survival analysis, I investigate the factors that led to introduction of rent control. I find that wars, foundation of universities, and presence of Jewish communities made the introduction of rent control more likely.
Subjects: 
rent control
housing policy
Antiquity
Middle Ages
logit model
Cox proportional hazards regression
JEL: 
N40
N90
O18
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.