Rent Control: Myths & Realities

Drawing on experience in six countries over the last fifty years, a group of economists, including Nobel Prize Winners Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, discusses the myths and realities of rent control. The authors present definitive evidence that, in the final analysis, there is no case for control.

Surprisingly, a low opinion of rent control is shared by all economists regardless of ideological persuasion. Strange as it may seem to the casual observer of the economics profession, economists appear to be unanimous in their opinion about the effects of rent control. This agreement ranges all the way from Nobel Laureates Hayek and Friedman to their fellow Prize Winner Gunnar Myrdal, an important architect of the Swedish Labour Party's welfare state, and socialist economist Assar Lindbeck.