The long-run U-shaped patterns of economic inequality are standardly explained by basic economic trends (Piketty’s r>g), taxation policies, or “great levelers,” like catastrophes. This paper argues that housing policy, in particular rent control, is a neglected explanatory factor in understanding overall inequality. We hypothesize that rent control could decrease overall housing wealth, lower incomes ...
This article studies housing rents in St. Petersburg from 1880 to 1917, covering an eventful period of Russian and world history. Digitizing over 5000 rental advertisements, we construct a state-of-the-art index – the first pre-war and pre-Soviet market data index for any Russian city. In 1915, a rent control and tenant protection policy was introduced in response to soaring prices following the outbreak ...
Seit Jahrzehnten investiert nur jeder vierte bis fünfte Haushalt in Deutschland in Aktien. Mit den drei Börsengängen der Deutschen Telekom 1996 bis 2000 wurden die Deutschen in Aktienlaune versetzt. Der Kurssturz kurz nach dem zweiten Börsengang, gefolgt von Korruptionsskandalen, beendete aber die gute Aktienstimmung. Die vorliegende Studie auf Basis von SOEP-Daten zeigt, dass die Ereignisse rund um ...
Deutschlands Wohneigentumsquote ist im internationalen Vergleich niedrig – nicht einmal die Hälfte aller Haushalte lebt in den eigenen vier Wänden. Gerade Haushalte mit geringeren Einkommen bilden selten Immobilienvermögen, obwohl es seit rund 60 Jahren Sparprämien gibt, die an diese Gruppen gerichtet sind. Die Wohnungsbauprämie hat in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten allerdings erheblich an Bedeutung verloren, ...
The coronavirus pandemic, which began in December 2019 and is currently spreading rapidly around the world, is having a noticeable impact on the economy and thus also on the real estate market. Since the measures to curb the spread are causing economic activities to decline massively, small and medium-sized companies in the service, hospitality, and transport sectors in particular, but the self-employed ...
What are the long-term economic effects of a more equal distribution of wealth? We exploit variation in historical inheritance rules for land traversing political, linguistic, geological, and religious borders in Germany. In some German areas, inherited land was to be shared or divided equally among children, while in others land was ruled to be indivisible. Using a geographic regression discontinuity ...
The (re-)introduction of rent regulation in the form of rent controls, tenant protection or supply rationing is back on the agenda of policymakers in light of rent inflation in many global cities. While rent control as social policy promises short-term relief, economists point to their negative long-run effects on new construction. This paper present long-run data on both rent regulation and housing ...