Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/213598 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
DIW Discussion Papers No. 1846
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
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, protection of tenants from eviction, and housing rationing) had any effects in a middle-income Latin American economy, such as Argentina. To answer this question, we take advantage of a wide range of housing market indicators and restrictive rental regulation indices covering almost one century. Using a standard OLS model and MARS, a non-linear estimation technique, we find that rental market regulations have exerted a statistically significant negative impact on the growth rates of the real housing rents. However, they were only effective for short periods following both World Wars, when regulations were novel and particularly strong.
Subjects: 
Argentina
housing rents
rent control
rental market regulations
JEL: 
C21
E31
R38
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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