Research

Working papers

• Build at your own risk. Integrating natural hazards into land use regulations [New working paper coming soon!]
  [Solo-authored]
  Abstract

  As climate risks intensify, governments increasingly use building mandates to limit future exposure. I study France's Risk Prevention Plans, which combine public hazard disclosure and mandated resilience standards in a natural-disaster insurance system financed through a regulated surcharge that does not vary with local hazard exposure. I build a near-comprehensive geocoded dataset of plans for mainland France and combine it with property transactions, building permits, and land-use data. Plans reduce new development by 10 to 20\%. Price responses are sharply heterogeneous across hazards. Flood risks are barely capitalized, while shrink--swell risks, a pervasive but understudied hazard, generate economically large discounts and stronger evidence of an adaptation premium. The results show that regulation curbs new development, but price capitalization is driven less by the supply restriction itself than by how buyers perceive and insure the underlying hazard. A within-city spatial-equilibrium framework organizes the mechanisms and provides the basis for counterfactual welfare analysis.

  
  

• Mayors strike back: Evidence from land use regulation (Submitted) [New working paper available upon request]
  with Guillaume Chapelle and Camille Urvoy
  Abstract

  While the decentralization literature traditionally frames policy design as a question of optimal authority assignment across governance levels, authority is often shared in practice. This paper studies strategic responses of local governments when a centrally imposed reform affects instruments they partially control. We exploit the 2014 nationwide abolition of floor area ratios in France, a housing policy intended to expand supply and improve affordability. Using detailed data on zoning regulations, building permits, housing density, and prices, we show that municipalities offset the reform by tightening other regulatory instruments remaining under their control, thereby offsetting the reform’s intended effects.

  
  

• The other half of the market. Multifamily land and the measurement of urban land values in France [Working paper available upon demand]
  with Guillaume Chapelle, Arthur Lemoine, Alain Trannoy, and Etienne Wasmer
  

• What is France worth ? Residential land value estimates [Working paper available upon demand]
  with Guillaume Chapelle, Arthur Lemoine, Alain Trannoy, and Etienne Wasmer
  

Work in progress

• A Giant with Feet of Clay: insurance, building standards, and risk capitalization
  with Sacha Nass

• New construction in declining areas: Depreciation, regulation, and urban center decline
  with François Lafont

• An optimal spatial allocation of households through the lense of natural risk exposure with Sophie Cêtre