Research
Dissertation: Second-Generation Rent Control and New Construction (defended 23 October 2026). Committee: Matthew Baker (advisor and chair), Christos Giannikos, Jonathan Conning.
One of economists’ standard objections to rent control is that it reduces new housing construction, but the laws spreading today differ by design from the strict rent freezes that earned that objection: they cap annual increases instead of freezing rents, exempt new buildings for a period of years (fifteen in Oregon), and let rents reset when a tenant leaves. My dissertation comprises three essays on whether that objection holds for the new laws, each built on its own data: parcel-level assessor records from both sides of the Oregon–Washington border, the 169 studies in Kholodilin’s (2024) review coded by design feature, and the text of the thirty-four state laws that preempt local rent control.
In 2019 Oregon passed SB 608, which caps annual rent increases at seven percent on top of an allowance for inflation, exempts new buildings for their first fifteen years, and allows rents to adjust to the market rate between tenancies. I use parcel-year assessor records on both the Oregon and Washington sides of their shared border in a difference-in-differences design, and I find no detectable aggregate decline in new construction. To find a proxy for rental construction, I use new builds on parcels held by absentee owners; I estimate these fell by roughly 1.2 per 1,000 parcels relative to those on the Washington side of the border. Because the comparison rests on a small number of county clusters, I judge the results with randomization inference. The estimates are limited by a single clean post-treatment year and a pre-existing differential trend; measured in proportional terms rather than levels, the pre-existing trend in aggregate construction disappears, while the decline in rental-proxy construction remains: about 21 percent across all border counties and 43 percent in the twelve-county panel within five kilometers of the border, with randomization-inference p-values of .08 and .004.
The second paper extends Kholodilin’s (2024) review of 169 empirical studies by coding each rent control regime the studies examine by its design features: how long new construction is exempt and how secure that exemption is, whether the law caps the rate of increase or the level of rent, and what happens to rents between tenancies. Across the 169 studies, rent control reliably lowers controlled rents, raises uncontrolled rents, reduces tenant mobility and unit quality, and raises homeownership, but its effect on new construction and rental supply is not consistently negative. The particular design features a rent control law contains predict its effects better than either a generalized “rent control” label or the “generation” labels that have come after.
Thirty-four states bar their cities from enacting rent control, most of them by statute. The third paper asks why, and what these bans do. They do not look like responses to political pressure: adoption spreads from neighbor to neighbor rather than along party lines or ideology. Rent control preemption has no detectable effect on the number of units permitted, whereas other state housing preemptions do.
If an exemption for new buildings works as intended, the cost to supply should be small; the Oregon data show no detectable aggregate decline, though building on parcels held by absentee owners, the closest proxy for rental construction, did fall. Therefore the policy implication is not that rent control has no cost to housing supply, but that the cost of a law like Oregon’s falls on rental construction and depends on how the law treats new buildings and vacant units.
Job market paper
Second-Generation Rent Control and New Housing Construction: Evidence from Oregon's SB 608
This paper covers Oregon's recent passage of SB 608 in 2019, a softer modern rent control that caps the annual rent increases at seven percent on top of an allowance for inflation, makes an exception for new builds which remain free from rent control for their first fifteen years, and allows rents to adjust to the market rate between tenancies. I use parcel-year assessor records on both the Oregon and Washington sides of their shared border in a difference-in-differences design, and I find no detectable aggregate decline in new construction. To find a proxy for rental construction, I use new builds on the parcels held by absentee owners; I estimate these fell by roughly 1.2 per 1,000 parcels relative to those on the Washington side of the border. However, these estimates are limited by the existence of only one clean post-treatment year in these data and a contaminating pre-treatment differential trend.
Working papers
By Generation and by Design: A Review of the Empirical Rent Control Literature
One of economists' standard objections to rent control is that it reduces new housing construction, but the laws spreading today differ by design from the strict rent freezes that earned that objection. This paper extends Kholodilin's (2024) review of empirical studies of rent control by coding each studied regime by its design features: how rent increases are capped, whether new construction is exempt, and what happens to rents between tenancies. Across these studies, rent control reliably lowers controlled rents, raises uncontrolled rents, lowers unit quality, and raises homeownership, but its effect on new construction and rental supply is not consistently negative. The particular design features a rent control law contains predict its effects better than either a generalized “rent control” label or the “generation” labels that have come after, and I propose coding on design features as a refined alternative to the conventional terms.
State Preemption of Rent Control: Adoption, Diffusion, and Effects on Housing Supply
A majority of US states have passed laws barring local governments within their state from enacting rent control and other housing policies, and these preemptions have seen a revival in recent years. I find rent control preemptions spread through neighbor-to-neighbor proximity rather than along party lines or ideology, while the later preemptions of inclusionary zoning, short-term rentals and source-of-income protections came mostly in states with Republican legislatures that had already preempted rent control. Rent control preemptions have no detectable effect on the number of housing units permitted. I find the inclusionary zoning, short-term rental and source-of-income preemptions, by contrast, are followed by about one additional unit per 1,000 residents.
Other publications
- “The Government’s Share of Health Expenditure: Effects on Life Expectancy & Healthcare Cost Efficiency,” Massachusetts Undergraduate Journal of Economics, 2014.