The Home Front: Rent Control and the Rapid Wartime Increase in Home Ownership

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wellesley College; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050716001017
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 1001-1043
• 关键词: world-war-ii; UNITED-STATES; MARKET; time; end

摘要

The U.S. home ownership rate rose by 10 percentage points between 1940 and 1945, despite severe restrictions on construction during World War II. I investigate whether wartime rent control played a role in this shift. The empirical test exploits variation in rent reductions across cities that had similar increases in rents prior to control. This variation does not appear to be correlated with underlying trends also driving home ownership. Greater initial rent reductions led to larger increases in home ownership; rent control can account for a significant share of the increase in home ownership over the early 1940s.