Rent control evidence explorer

This interactive feature allows the explorations of the existing empirical rent control literature (as of October 2026). Switching design features on or off shows what the empirical literature finds for rent control policies that meet the criteria. For more detail behind the methodology see: By Generation and by Design: A Review of the Empirical Rent Control Literature.

Generation

Each button sets the design-feature checkboxes below to that generation's rule. Adjust any box afterwards; the boxes do the filtering.

Design features

Within a feature, checked categories combine as any-of. Across features, every feature must match. Counts in parentheses are cells in the full set.

Include evidence from papers on multiple rent control regimes, and other regimes whose design features are uncoded (50 cells)

Direction of the reported effect, by outcome family

NegativeNullPositive

List the cells shown

Notes

Each cell's sign is the direction of rent control's effect on the outcome, as reported by the study: negative, null, or positive. Signs record direction, not desirability.
A cell is one study's signed result in one outcome family; a study has at most one cell per family. 1 cell whose study reports no clear direction is not shown.
Design features are coded for the regime each study examines, from statutes and the studies themselves, and a regime carries the same codes in every study of it. Uncoded means the feature could not be determined for that regime, most often because the study pools many regimes. The 50 cells with an uncoded feature are hidden unless the box below the design features is ticked; with it ticked, the generation buttons follow the paper's rule for uncoded features exactly.
The generation buttons are the paper's rule, written as checkbox settings. First generation: a freeze or an administered formula cap, with control persisting at turnover. Third generation: full vacancy decontrol, with a rate cap or no coded cap. Second generation: a rate cap with control persisting at turnover. In the paper, 16 cells whose regimes combine a freeze or administered cap with full vacancy decontrol are counted with the second generation; here they appear only under Show all cells, and the cell list names each regime's group.
Counts are descriptive. The statistical comparisons, the sensitivity universes, and the full coding rules are in the paper.
Data: 307 cells from 150 studies. The studies reviewed by Kholodilin (2024), recoded from the studies themselves, plus studies published 2023 to 2026 added by the author, all with the paper's design coding. Dataset version c3c1f323f2c15611, exported 2026-10-01.
Kholodilin, K. A. (2024). Rent control effects through the lens of empirical research: An almost complete review of the literature. Journal of Housing Economics, 63, 101983.