IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juecon/v153y2026ics0094119026000306.html

Judge for yourself? The impact of controls on the rental market in interwar New York

Author

Listed:
  • Günnewig-Mönert, Maximilian
  • Lyons, Ronan C.

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of early 20th-century rent control laws in New York City, exploiting judicial discretion as a source of variation. The 1920 regulations empowered municipal court judges to decide whether rent increases were “reasonable”, with rulings shaped by partisan affiliation. We assemble a new dataset of over 20,000 rental listings from the New York Times (1918–1930) and more than 7000 archival building permits, linked to records on 125 district judges. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design at municipal court district boundaries, we find that market rents rose by nearly 10 percent when crossing from Democrat- to Republican-controlled districts after rent control. We examine supply effects using a difference-in-differences design. We show that judicially enforced rent control substantially reduced residential investment: total residential investment was about 76 percent higher in landlord-friendly districts during the rent-control period. Together, these findings demonstrate how judicial discretion shaped both prices and investment, leading to systematic differences in profits and construction activity across districts, which likely shaped the medium-run build environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Günnewig-Mönert, Maximilian & Lyons, Ronan C., 2026. "Judge for yourself? The impact of controls on the rental market in interwar New York," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:153:y:2026:i:c:s0094119026000306
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2026.103859
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119026000306
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jue.2026.103859?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

    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:eee:juecon:v:153:y:2026:i:c:s0094119026000306. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622905 .

    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.