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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Yes, that could be true. We just can't rule out other possibilities with much confidence (yet).

Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Sorry I meant to include the link: wbthorne.com/evidence.html This is the direction of effect of studies of rent control when it comes of measures of mobility/stability

wbthorne.com

Evidence · William B. Thorne

Interactive explorer: the direction of rent control's reported effects on eight outcomes across 150 studies, filtered by the design features of each regime.

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Economists do measure mobility/stability effects of rent control (although admittedly not necessarily as a monetary cost.) But we have to remember the market is not allocating on need either, so there is no guarantee that more moving between apartments indicates a better allocation

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

here is the evidence we have on all CPI+X rent control regimes, to say the least, there is not a consensus: wbthorne.com/evidence.htm...

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

here's a fun example of 1920s rent control with a new housing exemption: bsky.app/profile/wbth...

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I think that is an available interpretation, but not the only one: bsky.app/profile/wbth...

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

FWIW the vast proportion of rent controls, even going back in time, already exempt new construction. Vacancy decontrol and the pricing mechanism are the two design features with lots of variation

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Economists don't dislike American sports enough: strict price controls and cartels with no entry and exit, break 'em up!

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

do you know of a paper that measures its effectiveness?

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

oh wow, people are fascinating. So, for Japan, the options are: deal with it (disruptive/expensive), hugely expensive subsidies, or increased immigration? (maybe some weird stuff but experimental)

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

not an area I have spent much time focusing on, but a student is pursuing this topic for an in-class paper: is there anything that works that isn't very expensive?

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

That seems like a plausible consensus that could emerge, but I think we do not yet understand how each of these design features interacts with one another (plus questions of enforcement & penalties) to rule out a version that could be more powerful and have minimal downsides.

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

it is effect direction so positive means increasing and negative decreasing for all variables. So positive means increasing rents

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

yeah I think that was roughly my impression

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I thought it was the space side that had decent fundamentals and the AI bit was a gimmick for the sake of the initial stock prices?

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Very sad, I remember interviewing with him when applying to graduate programs

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

yes, definitely lots of room for future research!

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

And some of the benefits and negatives are just the same thing framed differently: bsky.app/profile/wbth...

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Same for misallocation, what is "misallocation?" Well largely "the distribution of housing is different from what the free market would have allocated" that's the point of rent control, to allocate housing differently.

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Another thing to note on, for instance, the "mobility" (I dislike the name) outcome family, you could easily talk about its inverse as "stability." These are not benefits or drawbacks: do you value moving freely and easily or not being forced to move when you don't want to?

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

One thing that is interesting that speaks to this a bit: almost without fail, full vacancy decontrol is paired with just cause eviction protections (without which landlords could evict at any time to raise the rent.)

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EA Strom @profmisterlizzie.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

An economist doing nuanced work on rent regulation? Using painstaking mixed methods? Someone needs to hire @wbthorne.bsky.social

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

In general, I would be more worried about searching and latching on to effects that aren't really there than the inverse, just because of the incentives economists face.

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

my JMP is on Oregon RC with rich data, and it falls into this category. In some ways, it is deeply frustrating to do a lot of work and say, "I can't detect much" but realistically, most papers should look like this.

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It is seen as unfair not to contribute (further investment) and still get the reward of high rents, but the escape route could hypothetically be anything "build a park and all your buildings are no longer rent controlled." There are just so many knobs and dials to turn!

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

My *feeling* is that high "bite" is okay, so long as the escape routes available are socially valuable. Rent Control is, in some sense, addressing an urban free-rider problem (LVT would solve this, etc.) where old building owners get to take advantage of neighborhood improvements.

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

To avoid confusion I refer to this 10% or 20% number as "bite" and the other as "coverage," but then the question on coverage is "Can you do something to escape rent control?" if you choose not to do that thing, are you still "bound?"

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Would we call a RC with controlled rents 10% less than the market rate for every apartment, more or less binding than an RC with 20% less than the market rate but only on 50% of the housing stock?

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This brings to mind this paper on 1920s rent control. I think we cannot say across the board "more or less binding" because we quickly run into problems:

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Reposted by Will Thorne

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 07/10/2026

yes! rent control has many policy dials with many divergent effects!!

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

You can select for new construction exemption here in the first section, the new construction exemption is what first got me started on this paper

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Alas, that is the way things are headed a lot of places. Thank you for the kind words on my work, and I wish you a very enjoyable retirement!

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Try out the included tool, I think that goes some way to addressing your concern - let me know!

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 07/10/2026

This is great work from Will, breaking down the evidence on the impacts of rent control according to the finer details of the policy 👇

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Thanks! The Kholodilin 2024 paper was a huge influence on my work, and I thought your piece was very well done!

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

New paper to bring some context to this older discussion, I coded every single rent control regime covered in the paper you linked according to its design features (and updated with new papers): bsky.app/profile/wbth...

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

yes, good idea! I will add those tomorrow. (I thought this might only be seen by a few people who already had read the full paper; so not quite as accessible/user friendly as it could be)

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The whole paper came from arguments on Twitter, so I genuinely thank everyone from the good old days 🫡

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I am going to implement a feature for the website that pulls the quote from each paper where the claim was made, so you can click on a "bar" and it will give you the quotes from each paper, but that's still in beta.

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

this is actually sick as hell and a great idea for a showcase.

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I was almost tempted to have this paper replace my JMP (diff-in-diff millions of parcels either size of Oregon Washington border for statewide Oregon rent control; no clear effect on new construction.) Third paper is on the proliferation of rent control and other housing preemption laws.

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I have a new paper about the statewide stabilization in Oregon (no significant effects on total new housing construction), and this follows my meta analysis of the literature which finds the effects of modern rent control policies to not have clear negative effects on supply.

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I categorized every rent control regime by design feature, and re-ran the meta analysis and it largely aligns with your summary here. If you want to see it in full: bsky.app/profile/wbth...

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I do so in my review of the literature, here. The paper referenced in the article above does not distinguish between regime features, so that information was not available for the FT article: bsky.app/profile/wbth...

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I think you'll enjoy exploring the options I have put together ( wbthorne.com/evidence.html ):

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Will Thorne @wbthorne.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

it took a year or so of manually coding the design features of many many rent control regimes, but you can find such an effort and breakdown here: bsky.app/profile/wbth...

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