Although the goal of licensing is to ensure the quality of services, it can also induce firms to operate informally or exit altogether. This paper examines licensing in the rental housing market by developing a model that indicates licensing's impact on the size of the underground rental market, the number of vacancies, and homelessness are ambiguous. As a result, we calibrate the model using a unique dataset from Baltimore, which allows us to directly observe underground rentals and vacancies. Our calibrations show that licensing may have a modest impact on rents, while increasing quality more substantially. (JEL L15, K42, D78, E26, O17)

中文翻译：

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租赁市场的许可与非正式部门：理论与证据

尽管许可的目的是确保服务质量，但它也可以促使公司进行非正式经营或完全退出。本文通过开发一个模型来研究租赁房屋市场中的许可，该模型表明许可对地下租赁市场的规模，空置数量和无家可归的影响是模棱两可的。因此，我们使用来自巴尔的摩的唯一数据集对模型进行了校准，这使我们可以直接观察地下租金和空缺。我们的校准表明，许可可能会对租金产生适度的影响，同时会大幅提高质量。（ JEL L15，K42，D78，E26，O17）