Robert E. Wright

From a forthcoming piece on rent controls: Reviewing the historical reasons for the implementation of rent controls, a recent article in Cliometrica finds that they were rarely introduced in response to housing supply shocks, but rather to sudden increases in housing demand (sometimes associated with the concentration of stigmatized populations). Rent controls thus often emerged as political responses to shifts in demand rather than to an ailing supply. But increasing demand for urban housing can also reflect better economic opportunities in cities, including higher wages. In other words, rent controls may simply be a policy designed to protect incumbent urban workers from newcomers and preserve the “economic rents” they enjoy from living in cities. This makes the pro-rent-control movement into a force for social exclusion under the guise of “blame the landlords”.