Topic Regional Economy

Forward to the Past: Short-Term Effects of the Rent Freeze in Berlin

In 2020, Berlin introduced a rigorous rent-control policy responding to soaring prices by capping rents: the Mietendeckel (rent freeze). The German Constitutional Court revoked the policy only one year later. Although successful in lowering rents during its duration, the consequences for Berlin’s rental market and close-by markets are per se not clear. This article evaluates the short-term causal supply-side ...

Change in Body Weight of Older Adults before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Results from the Berlin Aging Study II

ObjectivesChange in body weight during the COVID-19 pandemic as an unintended side effect of lockdown measures has been predominantly reported for younger and middle-aged adults. However, information on older adults for which weight loss is known to result in adverse outcomes, is scarce. In this study we describe the body weight change in older adults before, during, and after the COVID-19 lockdown ...

The Role of Regulation and Regional Government Quality for High Growth Firms: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

High-growth firms (HGFs) are important for job creation and productivity growth. We investigate the relationship between product and labour market regulations, as well as the quality of regional governments that implement these regulations, and the development of HGFs across European regions. Using data from Eurostat, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Economic ...

Airbnb and Rental Markets: Evidence from Berlin

Working Memory and Fluid Intelligence Are Differentially Related to Categories of Urban Fabric in Older Adults: Results from the Berlin Aging Study

Urbanization is Globally increasing at a rapid rate but its consequences for mental health, including cognitivefunctioning, are not well understood. In particular, little is known about the effects of different morphologicalfeatures associated with urban development, such as variations in the densities of urban fabric (i.e., degrees ofground sealing). We investigated associations of episodic memory, ...

House Price Expectations

This study examines short-, medium-, and long-run price expectations in housing markets. At the heart of our analysis is the combination of data from a tailored in-person household survey, past sale offerings, satellite imagery on developable land, and an information treatment (RCT). As novel finding, we show that price expectations show no evidence for momentum-effects in the long run. We also do ...

The Rise and Fall of Social Housing? Housing Decommodification in Long-run Comparison

The comparative study of housing decommodification lags behind classical welfare state research, while housing research itself is rich in homeownership studies but lacks comparative accounts of private and social rentals due to missing comparative data. Building on existing works and various primary sources, this study presents a new collection of up to forty-eight countries’ social housing shares ...

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 ...

Health Implications of Building Retrofits: Evidence from a Population-Wide Weatherization Program

What is the impact of housing upgrades on occupant health? Although economists and policymakers are certain about the health implications of housing upgrades, empirical evidence is largely missing or else only based on small-scale experiments in developing countries. This study provides the first population-representative quasi-experimental estimates based on a large-scale refurbishment program that ...

Digitisation and Renaissance of the Manufacturing Industry in Major Cities: The Case of Berlin

The rise of digitisation will cause a major upheaval in the manufacturing industries, bringing changes to traditional industrial location patterns as well. In order to understand the direction these structural changes are taking, this paper analyses the start-up activity in the industrial sector. The frontrunners are metropolitan regions and in particular major cities such as Berlin or Munich. Furthermore, ...