Rent Contol: Open-and-Shut Case?

Brad De Long delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Thu Jun 8 13:24:34 PDT 2000



>To return to the original question, Seth, the conventional rent control
>argument that Krugman parrots assumes that new construction will be
>controlled. But in actually existing schemes like SF and NY, it isn't.

It isn't *now*. But at some point in the future what was to us new construction will be old construction, and at some point in the future there is some chance that it will be brought under the rent-control umbrella...

This has happened how many times in New York City? Twice so far?

Of course, this means that you *can't* solve the problem by removing rent control--because there remains a chance that some future election will bring in a city council that will reimpose it...

Brad DeLong



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