IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tcd/tcduee/tep0624.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Supply Side Effects of Rent Controls: Evidence from Ireland

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Gillespie

    (Galway University)

  • Janez Kren

    (Economic and Social Research Institute)

  • Ronan C. Lyons

    (Department of Economics and Centre for Economics, Policy & History, Trinity College Dublin)

  • Conor O'Toole

    (Economic and Social Research Institute)

Abstract

We use the introduction of rent stabilisation measures in Ireland after 2016, and their tightening in 2021, to understand the impact of these policies on rental supply. We use a district-level quarterly panel 2010-2023 to estimate whether there were market exits by landlords, in particular an increase in sale listings and a decrease in rental activity, after rent controls were applied. Rental activity is measured using both online listings and official tenancy registrations, with further data on room rentals. We use both two-way fixed effects and, given the nature of treatment, staggered treatment estimators. We also control for housing market and wider economic conditions and restrict our sample to minimize the impact of unobserved variables. Across all specifications, we find evidence of market exit, especially after rent controls were tightened: rent controls are associated with more sale listings and fewer rental listings/registrations. The negative impact of rent controls of room rental listings is, likewise, consistent with market exit rather than simply reduced mobility.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Gillespie & Janez Kren & Ronan C. Lyons & Conor O'Toole, 2024. "The Supply Side Effects of Rent Controls: Evidence from Ireland," Trinity Economics Papers tep0624, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0624
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/TEP/2024/TEP0624.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Â rent control; landlord attrition; Ireland;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0624. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Colette Angelov (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detcdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.