IESET.
Hypotheses·housing·rent_control_reduces_housing_supply_and_quality

Binding rent control (price ceilings below market clearing with enforcement teeth) reduces aggregate housing supply in affected markets, reduces the quality of existing rent-controlled stock through reduced maintenance incentives, and produces distributional effects favouring long-tenure incumbents over mobile workers and new household formation.

These effects are well-identified in the literature and represent a framework-validation opportunity: consensus among economists is ~93% that rent control reduces housing availability and quality (IGM Forum survey). If the framework cannot reproduce this on natural- experiment data (Berlin Mietendeckel 2020-2021, San Francisco 1994 expansion, Stockholm persistent control), it is broken.

BLOCKEDengine/runs/rent_control_reduces_housing_supply_and_quality

BLOCKED — required city/metro-level outcomes not in vintages (5 missing). Hypothesis is pre-registered ahead of fetcher work; running on country-level proxy would conflate treatment dilution with absence of effect. See BLOCKED.md.

confidence cueResult card produced; verdict unclassified.

policy briefNeeds review

In ordinary language

Does the housing rule being tested make homes easier to build, rent, or afford, or does it quietly reduce supply and push costs elsewhere?

plain answer

required city/metro-level outcomes not in vintages (5 missing).

why it matters

Housing policy affects rents, mobility, household budgets, and construction. The test looks for measurable effects rather than relying on slogans.

how the test works

It compares 3 country or place units from 2000 to 2023, using a did callaway santanna design, with fixed effects for metro and year.

what was measured
What changed
  • Rent control bind
What we checked
  • Rent growth rate
  • Housing stock growth
  • Housing quality proxy
what this does not prove

A single test is not the whole truth. It narrows the claim under a specific sample, time period, and method. Strong policy conclusions need the pattern to survive nearby tests, alternative data, and serious objections.

verification

0 input datasets, 0 unresolved missing series, provenance status: no input vintages recorded.

Results

engine/runs/rent_control_reduces_housing_supply_and_quality
1007550250200020122023DEUUSASWE
illustrative sketch · run pending
No coefficients yet. When the model fires, this chart will show rent_growth_rate across 3 sampled countries over 2000–2023.
The shapes above are stylised — none of the lines are real data.
Placeholder for rent_control_reduces_housing_supply_and_quality. Published chart will be generated from engine/runs/rent_control_reduces_housing_supply_and_quality/chart_data.json.

Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

3 schools list this hypothesis as a test of their position. The chips below are school-level scoreboard outcomes, not a second hypothesis verdict.

hypothesis verdict vs scoreboard outcome

The banner verdict judges this hypothesis as written. The scoreboard asks whether each school's polarity-corrected prediction was right. Raw status is not a school win: SUPPORTED supports schools that needed SUPPORTED, but refutes schools that needed REFUTED.

Chicago School Monetarismwins if SUPPORTEDscoreboard no-callClassical Liberalwins if SUPPORTEDscoreboard no-callDemocratic Socialism (Bernsteinian revisionism + modern)wins if REFUTEDscoreboard no-call

Pre-registration

pre-registered
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z

Binding rent control (price ceilings below market clearing with enforcement teeth) reduces aggregate housing supply in affected markets, reduces the quality of existing rent-controlled stock through reduced maintenance incentives, and produces distributional effects favouring long-tenure incumbents over mobile workers and new household formation. These effects are well-identified in the literature and represent a framework-validation opportunity: consensus among economists is ~93% that rent control reduces housing availability and quality (IGM Forum survey). If the framework cannot reproduce this on natural- experiment data (Berlin Mietendeckel 2020-2021, San Francisco 1994 expansion, Stockholm persistent control), it is broken.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

Not supported if ANY of: (a) Berlin Mietendeckel 2020-2021 did not reduce Berlin rental stock growth or new-rental listings relative to other German cities; (b) San Francisco 1994 expansion did not reduce housing supply growth in affected units relative to synthetic control (Diamond- McQuade-Qian replication); (c) Stockholm continuous control market does not show longer queues + higher informal transfer prices than non-controlled Stockholm non-regulated segment. A clean failure on all three cases would be extraordinary and would overturn current economic consensus; it has very low prior probability (<0.05).

formal test & threshold
test:      rent_control_multi_case_replication
threshold: All three cases show expected-direction effect at p<0.10 OR pooled meta-analytic coefficient is negative at p<0.05

Method

Template
did_callaway_santanna
Fixed effects
metro, year
Clustering
metro
Sample
3 countries · 2000 – 2023
Evidence type
causal

Staggered DiD with metro + year FE. Primary outcomes: rent growth, housing stock growth, quality proxies. Synthetic control per treated case as robustness (Diamond-McQuade-Qian 2019 methodology for SF; Kholodilin-Kohl 2023 for Berlin). DATA STATE: this hypothesis is pre-registered ahead of data availability. The fetchers for city-level rent and permit data are not yet shipped. Hypothesis will run in v1.1 once fetchers (likely specialist BLS CPI rent subindex + Eurostat subnational housing) are implemented. Pre-registration now locks the spec so the subsequent run cannot be re-fitted to findings.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
rent_growth_rate
outcome
constructed:city-level rent index — fetcher pending. Candidates: BIS residential property prices by city (WS_SPP has city-level rowstier 5
yoy_pct_change
housing_stock_growth
outcome
constructed:building-permits or housing-completions at treated-city level — fetcher pending.tier 5
yoy_pct_change
housing_quality_proxy
outcome
constructed:maintenance complaints / code violations / age of unit mix — fetcher pending; likely requires city-administrative data ntier 5
level
rent_control_bind
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 in treated city-years (Berlin 2020-2021 Mietendeckel, SF 1994 expansion post-1995, Stockholm continuous). tier 5
indicator
metro_population
control
pendinglog
metro_gdp_per_capita
control
pendinglevel

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — rent_control_reduces_housing_supply_and_quality

Verdict: BLOCKED — required city/metro-level outcomes not in vintages (5 missing). Hypothesis is pre-registered ahead of fetcher work; running on country-level proxy would conflate treatment dilution with absence of effect. See BLOCKED.md.

Status

BLOCKED on data. See BLOCKED.md.

Missing data

  • bls:CUURS12B_rent_nyc_msa
  • bls:CUURS24B_rent_minneapolis_msa
  • bls:CUURS35B_rent_portland_msa
  • eurostat:prc_hpi_q_berlin
  • us_census:BPS_permits_metro

Estimator (pre-registered, awaiting data)

Callaway-Sant'Anna staggered DiD across cohorts:

  • berlin_de: Mietendeckel (2020-02-23)
  • stpaul_us: St Paul rent stabilisation (2021-11-02)
  • nyc_us: HSTPA (2019-06-14)
  • oregon_us: SB-608 (2019-02-28)

Outcomes (pre-registered)

  • housing-permit issuance (city/metro)
  • rental-listing counts
  • median rent

Provenance

See manifest.yaml, BLOCKED.md, replication.py.

Strongest opposing argument

Every hypothesis ships with its charitable opposing argument. The framework earns credibility by handling objections at their strongest, not weakest.

Notes

Core literature for v1.1 when running: Diamond, McQuade, Qian (2019) 'The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality' AER 109(9). Sims (2007) 'Out of control: what can we learn from the end of Massachusetts rent control?' J Urb Econ 61. Autor, Palmer, Pathak (2014) 'Housing market spillovers' J Pol Econ. Kholodilin, Kohl (2023) 'Rent control: a review of the evidence' J Housing Econ. IGM Forum Chicago Booth survey 'Rent Control' (2012). Data fetchers needed: - BLS CPI rent subcomponents by MSA (expand existing data.fetchers.bls) - Eurostat housing statistics (already-shipped fetcher, needs new series) - City-level administrative data for supply / quality proxies (likely requires specialist fetcher per-case) This is the first HOUSING-topic hypothesis in the repo. Needs new topic_dir hypotheses/housing/ (already implicit via topic enum).

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.