Topic Real Estate and Housing

Rent Control, Market Segmentation, and Misallocation: Causal Evidence from a Large-Scale Policy Intervention

This paper studies market segmentation that arises from the introduction of rent control. When a part of the market remains unregulated, theory predicts an increase of free-market rents due to the misallocation of households to dwellings. To document this mechanism empirically, we study a large-scale policy intervention in the German housing market. We isolate the misallocation mechanism by exploiting ...

The Long-Term Implications of Destruction During the Second World War on Private Wealth in Germany

By the end of the Second World War, an estimated 20 percent of the West German housing stock had been destroyed. Building on a theoretical lifecycle model of wealth accumulation, this paper examines the extent to which regional differences in destruction can explain differences in wealth today” – at the beginning of the 21st century. As our empirical basis, we link a unique historical dataset on the ...

Energetische Gebäudesanierung muss wieder in Schwung gebracht werden

Investments in Energy-Efficient Building Renovation Are on a Downward Slide

According to the latest review report of the Council of Experts on Climate Change, the German building sector failed to meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in 2022. This is in part because investments in energy-efficient building refurbishment—supported by all kinds of policy measures— has neither been low nor shown a consistently positive trend over the past ten years. Furthermore, ...

The Hidden Homeownership Welfare State: An International Long-term Perspective on the Tax Treatment of Homeowners

Welfare is traditionally understood as social security decommodifying labour markets or as social investment policies. In the domain of housing, however, welfare for homeowners is largely hidden in the tax codes’ fiscal exemptions. Based on a content analysis of legislation, this article introduces a novel yearly database of 37 countries between 1901 and 2020 to uncover the “hidden welfare state” of ...

Scenario Analysis for Net Zero: The Applicability of Climate Neutrality Studies for Transitioning Firms in the German Building Sector and Energy-Intensive Industry

Various stakeholders are increasingly encouraging companies from the real economy to adopt measures facilitating their transition towards carbon neutrality. In this context, companies are expected to implement forward-looking strategies and climate-related reporting practices using scenario analysis aligned with scientific evidence and credible pathways to net zero carbon emissions. This paper examines ...

Government-Made House Price Bubbles? Austerity, Homeownership, Rental, and Credit Liberalization Policies and the “Irrational Exuberance” on Housing Markets

Housing bubbles and crashes are catastrophic events for economies, implying enormous destruction of housing wealth, financial default risks, construction unemployment, and business cycle downturns. This paper investigates whether governmental housing policies can affect economies’ propensity to build up speculative house price bubbles. Specifically, we focus on the liberalization effects of rent and ...

Social Policy or Crowding-out? Tenant Protection in Comparative Long-run Perspective

Private rental markets have become increasingly important since the Global Financial Crisis 2008–2009 and rent controls are back on the political agenda. Yet, they have received less attention from housing scholars than homeownership and public housing. This paper presents new data on the development of private tenancy legislation based on a content-coding of rent control, protection of tenants from ...

Heating energy down slightly, climate targets still not met

2nd Workshop on Rent Control

The aim of the workshop is to bring together experts from different countries and different disciplines (economics, history, law, sociology, etc.) whose “common denominator” is their interest in rent control. This event aims to be a forum for discussing rent control experiences around the world. It should also foster a stronger network among scholars, thus facilitating joint research...