“Can the central government modify land use regulation ? Evidence from the removal of floor area ratio in

France” with Guillaume Chapelle and Camille Urvoy (Working paper available soon)

In this paper, we study the impact of a national-level reform that abolished locally set floor area ratios (FAR) in France. FAR is a piece of regulation that local policy makers use to prevent urban densification. The goal of the reform was to foster the supply of housing projects in cities while reducing the consumption of agricultural land by densifying urban places. To identify its impact on the Paris metropolitan area, we use a difference-in-difference (DID) framework comparing housing blocks where a maximum FAR existed before the reform with the closest blocks where no FAR existed. We find that treated areas, in which FAR were removed, didn’t experiment any change in their density and no particular dynamic in their price. This suggests that the suppression of FAR imposed by the central government didn’t have any positive impact on the housing supply. Further results suggest that local authorities might have compensated for the disappearance of FAR using alternate tools that still were available as maximum heights.

“Are land use regulations capitalized into land prices? An estimation on French data” with Guillaume Chapelle (Work in progress)

“Build at your own risk. Integrating disaster hazards in land use regulation” (Working paper available on demand)

Urban areas are main economic centers that gather most of the world’s population but they are exposed to complex disaster risks and the recurrence of catastrophic events is likely to increase with climate change. Risks prevention plans (PPR) are a type of land use regulation that intend to tackle externalities deriving from inhabitants locating in hazardous areas by controlling new development. It first provides objective information about risks, and then converts the risk assessment into land use restrictions. Does the plan implementation limit number of vulnerable stakes in at-risk areas? This paper relies on administrative data to disentangle the effect of information provision from land-use regulation in France. To my knowledge, it is the first data set on hazard-based land use regulations that study the effect of new zoning over detailed period with granular geospatial data. I identify the causal impacts of each implementation phase on local housing markets in a difference-in-difference framework with staggered adoption. Preliminary results indicate that conversion of new land for development is slowed down, but results are driven by zones where new constructions is totally banned. In less regulated zones, where construction is allowed but subject to protective measures, new development continues. Indeed, after a short period of decrease due to the administrative uncertainty created by the implementation process, the number of building permits go back to their initial level. Both information disclosure and increase in construction costs do not divert people from locating in hazardous areas. These results can mask important heterogeneity between plans.

Broader audience writing: Article on the Regards Croisés sur l’Economie blog

Crédit photo : Atlas des Régions Naturelles