Do Wall Street Landlords Undermine Renters’ Welfare?
研究机构投资者收购独户住宅用于出租对租房者福利的影响，发现机构房东利用市场势力提高租金，但也通过改善社区安全提升了租房服务质量。
Abstract We examine the recent rise of institutional investment in the single-family home rental market and its implications for renters’ welfare. Using institutional mergers to identify local exogenous variation in institutional landlords’ scale and market share, we show that rents increase in neighborhoods where both merging firms owned properties (i.e., overlapped neighborhoods) relative to other nonoverlapped neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the crime rate also significantly decreases in overlapped neighborhoods after mergers. Our findings suggest that while institutional landlords leverage their market power to extract greater surplus from renters, they also improve the quality of rental services by enhancing neighborhood safety. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.