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...

This paper introduces a new international longitudinal database of governmental housing policies. The regulations are measured using binary variables based on a thorough analysis of the real-time country-specific legislation. Three major restrictive policies are considered: rent control,...

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...

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...

World War I led to radical changes in the government policy of participating countries. The enormous demographic and economic disturbances caused by the war forced the governments of all the belligerent nations to drastically restrict the market freedom. In particular, the state began actively...

Rising rents in German cities have led to an intense debate about the need for tighter rent controls in housing markets. In April 2015, the so-called rental brake was introduced, which imposes upper bounds for rents in new contracts, in order to immediately slow down the increase of rents in...

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,...

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...

In the shadow of homeownership and public housing, social policy through the regulation of private rental markets is a neglected and underestimated field of social policy. This paper, therefore, presents unique new data on the development of private tenancy legislation through the binary coding...