Real rents measured in the United States CPI increased 17.4 log-points from 2000 to 2018. We present a spatial equilibrium framework to decompose the increase into several channels, including demand to live in housing-supply-inelastic cities. We find location demand contributed significantly: using parameterizations from the literature and a new rent index, we find it is responsible for between 17 and 73 percent of the overall rent increase, and an even larger share in cities where CPI is measured. The wide range is primarily due to a lack of consensus over the population elasticity to rents, so we estimate it by comparing the effects of demand shocks across cities of differing housing supply elasticities. We find that demand changes have similar effects across cities, suggesting a high population elasticity. Therefore, our preferred estimate is that location demand accounts for more than half of the increase. We discuss implications for housing supply policy.

从 2000 年到 2018 年，以美国 CPI 衡量的实际租金增长了 17.4 个对数点。我们提出了一个空间均衡框架，将增长分解为多个渠道，包括居住在住房供应缺乏弹性的城市的需求。我们发现位置需求贡献显着：使用文献中的参数化和新的租金指数，我们发现它占整体租金增长的 17% 至 73%，在衡量 CPI 的城市中所占的份额更大。范围广泛主要是由于对人口对租金的弹性缺乏共识，因此我们通过比较不同住房供应弹性的城市需求冲击的影响来估计它。我们发现需求变化对不同城市的影响相似，表明人口弹性很高。所以，我们的首选估计是位置需求占增长的一半以上。我们讨论了对住房供应政策的影响。