Research

Job Market Paper

  • Build at your own risk. Integrating climate hazards in land use regulations [New draft 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 where premiums do not vary with 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 at the extensive margin by around 20%, with limited impacts at the intensive margin. 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.

    Risk Prevention Plan in Hérimoncourt

    Broad audience writing (earlier versions of the project): Regards Croisés sur l’Economie

Working papers

  • Mayors Strike Back: Evidence from Land Use Regulation with Guillaume Chapelle and Camille Urvoy (Submitted)
    Abstract

    When a national government relaxes a local regulation, do local officials comply, or find other ways to keep the same rules in place? We study a 2014 French reform that abolished floor area ratios (FAR), a widely used cap on building density, with the explicit goal of expanding housing construction. We assemble a new geospatial panel tracking three zoning tools — floor area ratios, building heights, and coverage ratios — over 15 years across 118 municipalities in the Paris region, linked to building permits, housing stock, and transaction prices. Comparing municipalities where FAR existed before the reform to those where it did not, we show that local governments offset the deregulation by tightening the two instruments they retained: maximum heights fell, coverage ratios tightened, and permit denials rose. Density did not increase in previously regulated areas, and we detect no effect on prices, consistent with the limited change in supply. The regulatory tightening was strongest where mayors faced closer elections and where property values are higher, not where mayors belong to parties opposing the reforming government, pointing to electoral accountability rather than partisanship. Top-down deregulation can therefore be substantially undercut when local governments retain complementary instruments, suggesting reforms must either limit local discretion directly or realign local incentives.

    Difference between observed FAR from building permits and regulatory FAR values, before and after the 2014 reform

    Difference between observed and regulatory FAR, before and after removal

  • The Other Half of the Market. Multifamily Land and the Measurement of Urban Land Values in France [Available Upon Request] with Guillaume Chapelle, Arthur Lemoine, Alain Trannoy, and Etienne Wasmer (Submitted)
    Abstract

    Estimates of urban land values typically rely on plots purchased for single-family houses, the only segment systematically observed in public data. This paper combines the universe of French real-estate transactions with the digitized cadaster to develop a new transaction-level methodology for identifying land acquired for residential development between 2010 and 2019, distinguishing single-family from multifamily parcels. Multifamily parcels account for only 5% of transactions but 55% of new housing units and imply central land values three to four times higher than estimates based on single-family plots alone. Over the decade, adjusted multifamily land prices rose by about 50%, compared with about 10% for single-family land.

    Evolution of single-family and multi-family land prices in France, 2010-2019

    Single-family land prices

    Multi-family land prices

Work in progress

  • What is France Worth? Residential Land Value Estimates with Guillaume Chapelle, Arthur Lemoine, Alain Trannoy, and Etienne Wasmer

  • Building in Declining Cities: Housing Depreciation, Historical Protection, and Urban Sprawl with François Lafont

  • A Giant with Feet of Clay: Disaster Recognition and Risk Capitalization in Housing Markets with Sacha Nass (INSEE)

  • Do Protective Building Codes Reduce Disaster Losses? Evidence from Natural Hazards in France with Sophie Cêtre (CCR)

  • Household Location, Natural Risk Exposure, and Spatial Welfare with Sophie Cêtre (CCR)