As the global property industry meets in Cannes, France for its premier annual conference, rent control is a big topic of discussion.

Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, recently drew sharp criticism for proposing new controls as a way of making life in the British capital more attractive and more affordable. And in the US, Oregon just passed the first rent control measure to apply across an entire state.

Some Britons are repulsed by attempts to control rent levels because successive governments spent much of the 20th century vacillating between more and less regulation, with each change producing progressively worse outcomes. And when residents of high-cost California last year had the opportunity to give local governments more leeway to cap rents, they resoundingly rejected the measure.