A new measure of private rental market regulation index and its effects on housing rents

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, the authors construct a country-specific time-varying private rental regulation index for 18 developed economies starting from 1973 to 2014. Second, the authors analyze the effects of their index on the housing rental markets across 18 countries and states. Design/methodology/approach - The authors’ index not only covers 18 developed economies over 42 years but also combines both tenure security and rent laws. The authors’ empirical framework is that of panel regressions with time and country fixed effects. Findings - The authors’ index sheds further insights on the extent to which rent and tenure security laws have converged over the past 40 years for each economy. Moreover, the authors show three empirical results. First, stringent rent control regimes do lead to lower real rent growth rates than regimes with free rents. Second, soft rent control regimes with time-limited tenure security and minimum duration periods, however, may cause higher rent growth rates than free rent regimes. Third, rent-free regimes do not show significant high real rent appreciation rates. Originality/value - The authors’ rental regulation index is the first time-varying index that covers more than 18 economies over 40 years.