Analyzing Historic Rental Prices in St. Petersburg (1880-1917): Revolutions, World War I and Rent Control

The project studies housing rents in St. Petersburg between 1880 and 1917. Based on official rent data and newspaper announcements, we construct a hedonic quality-adjusted rent index in continuous time and investigate its determinants. We examine the effects of supply and demand shocks related to two Russian Revolutions (1905-1907 and 1917), World War I, and the introduction of a rent control policy. Furthermore, we perform spatial and cross-sectional analyses to comprehensively describe rental price dynamics.