Gintautas Bloze

Rent Control and Misallocation

Rent control is still an important type of government regulation of housing markets in many countries and numerous researchers have studied its implications for allocation, welfare and investments in housing. The present paper aims to improve our understanding of the effect of second-generation rent control when it is applied only to one sector of the rental market. It is diagrammatically shown that the welfare effects are very different between a universal and a limited application of rent control. Studying the Danish case of second-generation rent control, lower rents are found in controlled sectors and a minor increase of the rent in the uncontrolled sector. Using the area of living space in the dwelling as a measure for housing consumption, evidence is also produced of both overallocation and underallocation of housing in the rent-controlled sectors; as envisaged by economic theory.

Owning, Letting and Demanding Second Homes

An increasing number of households consume housing beyond the primary home as owners of a second home. Economic studies of second homeownership are still very scarce, and the present empirical study fills this gap to some extent. It is based on Danish survey data combined with administrative register data and presents estimations of the probability of owning a second home, the decision to let the second home and the number of let weeks per year. Also income elasticities for primary and second housing demand are estimated. We find a conventional monotonic increase in demand elasticities for primary housing demand for non-owners of second homes; however, owners of second homes have the highest income elasticity in the middle income group.