Rent control and neighborhood income. Evidence from Vienna, Austria
Ulrich B. Morawetz and
H. Allen Klaiber
Economic Analysis and Policy, 2024, vol. 84, issue C, 145-158
Abstract:
Rent control is a highly controversial housing policy. For Vienna, Austria, we show how rent control impacts block-group income distributions as the share of residents with rental contracts subject to a cap increase. Using regression with spatial fixed effects, we find that a 1 %-point increase in residents with rental contracts subject to a cap reduces the average net income of the block-group by 52.70 Euro/year. For the typical block-group containing 861 residents, this implies a reduction in total block-group income of 45,375 Euro/year. This suggests increasing numbers of lower income residents are locating in block-groups with rental caps. We further show the effect of capped rents on average income is heterogeneous across and within block-groups, with greater reductions in higher income block-groups compared to lower income block-groups. Our results demonstrate that the rent control policy in Vienna impacts residents’ location choice and the resulting spatial income distribution despite the lack of means testing.
Keywords: Rent-control; Income distribution; Housing policy; Sorting; Vienna (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592624002133
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:84:y:2024:i:c:p:145-158
DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2024.08.025
Access Statistics for this article
Economic Analysis and Policy is currently edited by Clevo Wilson
More articles in Economic Analysis and Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().