It is hard to estimate housing supply elasticities. India is a particularly useful country to study housing supply because it is large and has a variety of housing typologies. We estimate the supply elasticity of non-durable, durable, and vacant residential housing units in urban India. We use...

One housing paradox in many markets is the simultaneous presence of high costs and high vacancy. India has expensive housing relative to incomes and an urban housing vacancy rate of 12.4%. We look at two possible explanations for vacancy – pro-tenant rent control laws, and poor contract...

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....