Research
Working papers
Wages, Agglomeration and Air Pollution (being updated)
Cleaner Air For Whom? Disparities in Recent Air Quality Improvements Across and Within French Cities (being updated, new version very soon!)
FAERE Prize for Best Paper by a Young Economist
Commuting, Air Quality and Welfare, with Pol Cosentino (draft available upon request)
AFET - Fabrique de la Cité Young Researcher Award
Abstract
Denser cities are more productive and offer higher wages, through agglomeration externalities. But urban density may also bring about higher local air pollution, which can either be compensated for via higher wages (as a consumption disamenity), or have negative productivity effects, leading to lower wages (as a production disamenity). This paper studies how air pollution affects wages across French cities, and whether it enhances, or instead attenuates, nominal wage differentials (the urban wage premium) and real wage differentials. Using panel data over the 2002-2018 period and a triple instrumental variable strategy to tackle endogeneity concerns, I first confirm that density does foster fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration. Then, I show that as wages react negatively, nominal wage gains from agglomeration are lower on average due to local air pollution. Interestingly, real wages also negatively affected. Relying on the structure of a spatial equilibrium model, I show that this is because local air pollution is an even stronger production disamenity than it is a consumption disamenity: while PM2.5 impairs productivity even at low levels, compensation only kicks in for the largest, most polluted cities. There is also heterogeneity by skill, as the wages of high-skill workers are overall less affected than those of low-skill workers.Presentations
ERUDITE Seminar (UPEC, Jan 2026), 4th PPCR Workshop (ENS Lyon, Dec 2025), 29th EAYE Annual Meeting (King's College London, May 2025), 1st INSEE-CGDD Conference (French Finance Ministry, Feb 2025), GY500 Seminar (LSE, Nov 2024), 13th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association (Copenhagen, June 2024), Workshop Cities and the Environment (PSE, Jan 2024), 38th EEA Meeting (Barcelona, Aug 2023), 28th EAERE Annual Conference (Cyprus, June 2023), 71st AFSE Congress (SciencesPo Paris, June 2023), 39èmes Journées de Microéconomie Appliquée (Strasbourg, June 2023), 4th Smart And Sustainable Cities Conference (Lille, Oct 2022, early version with only density and PM2.5)Cleaner Air For Whom? Disparities in Recent Air Quality Improvements Across and Within French Cities (being updated, new version very soon!)
FAERE Prize for Best Paper by a Young Economist
Abstract
This paper makes use of high-resolution remote-sensing data to provide the first national-scale study of cross-sectional and longitudinal inequality in exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in France, focusing on neighbourhood income and the share of immigrants. There is a U-shaped relationship between income and PM2.5 exposure at the national level, but within urban areas, poorer neighbourhoods are more exposed on average. I also document that holding income constant, neighbourhoods with a high share of immigrants are overexposed. In a second step, I exploit a change in air quality schemes at the level of urban areas in a staggered adoption event-study framework, so as to shed light on potentially unequal benefits from the induced reduction in exposure. Results suggest that the adoption of new air quality schemes accounted for about 30% of the total change in air pollution over the period. Neighbourhoods with a higher share of immigrants did not experience a significantly larger decrease in PM2.5, contributing to a stagnation in disparities in exposure. I quantify which types of measures proved most effective, by targeted sector, and highlight the critical role of additional funding from the national government.Presentations
5th Discrimination and Diversity Workshop (Exeter, online, June 2025), LOCUS-REGARDS Seminar (Reims, Nov 2022), 27th TEPP Annual Conference (Evry, Oct 2021), 8th FAERE Conference (Grenoble, Sept 2021)Commuting, Air Quality and Welfare, with Pol Cosentino (draft available upon request)
AFET - Fabrique de la Cité Young Researcher Award
Abstract
We study the impact of both existing and planned public transport infrastructure investments on local air quality and welfare, focusing on the Paris region. We start by providing reduced-form evidence that the creation of new tramway lines in the 2010s triggered an increase in public transport usage, thus improving local air quality. We develop a quantitative urban model (QUM) with endogenous amenities and productivity, to include a) transport choice between a polluting and a non-polluting option, and b) local air pollution that affects both amenities and productivity. We calibrate the model to 2018 neighbourhood-level data for Paris, and use it to perform two main prospective counterfactual analyses: the first, on (small-scale) tramway line investments, and the second, on the largest public transport infrastructure Paris has built since the 1960s and which is yet to be delivered, the Grand Paris Express metro project. We find significant welfare gains in our main scenario, and highlight the critical role of local air pollution as a negative externality, in addition to in-migration. Overall, the results suggest that, by omitting air quality improvements, standard QUMs tend to underestimate both the welfare effects of new public transport infrastructure, and the induced spatial sorting of workers by skill.Presentations
6th Meeting on Transport Economics and Infrastructure (IEB, Jan 2026), Scientific Commitee of Société des Grands Projets (Paris, Dec 2025), 1st CREST Urban and Spatial Economics PhD Workshop (Dec 2025, by co-author), 3rd AFET Conference (Lyon 2, Nov 2025, by co-author), 40th EEA Meeting (Bordeaux, Aug 2025)Selected work in progress
Place-Based Interventions and Environmental Inequalities
The Effect of Farm Structure on Economic and Environmental Outcomes, with Sylvain Chabé-Ferret, Anouch Missirian, Emmanuel Paroissien and Joakim A. Weill
The Effect of Farm Structure on Economic and Environmental Outcomes, with Sylvain Chabé-Ferret, Anouch Missirian, Emmanuel Paroissien and Joakim A. Weill