Colloquium: Distributional Consequences of Rent Regulation

This paper examines the distributional consequences of rent regulation. We estimate counterfactual free market rents for households benefiting from rent control in their current tenancy. The gap between the paid rent and free market rent represents the benefit that a household draws from the rent control policy. We document how this measure is allocated along various household characteristics, providing novel evidence on the distributional consequences of rent control policies. Our results show that rent control mainly benefits older renters at the expense of younger ones.