One argument against deregulating the rental housing market is that high market rents in attractive areas would increase economic segregation. During the 1990s one major city in Sweden (Malmö) increased rents step by step in attractive areas, while another (Stockholm) did not do so. This 'natural experiment’ makes it possible to get new evidence about the relation between market rents and economic segregation. The development in different types of areas within the cities is compared over a ten-year period. The results indicate that segregation increased in almost the same way in both cities. Possible counteracting factors are discussed, but the conclusion is that the result must be seen as important evidence against the hypothesis that a (slow) move towards market rent would drastically increase economic segregation.
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Lind et al. (2006) studied this question.
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