As someone who has taught economics for 28 of the last 33 years, I thought I had pretty much seen everything a student could come up with in an introductory course in which the issue was rent control. What I’m about to share is not a new concept or a new analytic result, but simply an inspired way of saying an old result.

In response to a question about rent control, one of my students, Preston Rackauskas, referred to a rent ceiling as an “incentive ceiling.” Sweet.