Working Papers

• The Cost of Air Pollution for Workers and Firms, with Hélène Ollivier (submitted) [Working paper, February 2025]
  Abstract:

  
  

  This paper shows that even moderate air pollution levels, such as those in Europe, harm the economy by reducing firm performance. Using monthly firm-level data from France, we estimate the causal impact of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) on sales and worker absenteeism. Leveraging exogenous pollution shocks from local wind direction changes, we find that a 10 percent increase in monthly PM2.5 exposure reduces firm sales by 0.4 percent on average over the next two months, with sector-specific variation. Simultaneously, sick leave rises by 1 percent. However, this labor supply reduction explains only part of the sales decline. Our evidence suggests that air pollution also reduces worker productivity and dampens local demand. Aligning air quality with WHO guidelines would yield economic benefits on par with the costs of regulation or the health benefits from reduced mortality.

• The Gender Gap in Carbon Footprint, with Ondine Berland (Draft available upon request)
  Abstract:

  
  

  Understanding the distribution of carbon emissions across population groups is crucial for designing fair and acceptable climate policies. We uncover a significant gender gap in carbon footprints using individual-level data from France on food consumption and transport use, two categories representing half of individuals’ emissions, matched with product-level emission intensities. Women’s footprints are 26% lower than men’s on average. The gap is found among couples and singles, and narrows down to 18% when controlling for socioeconomic characteristics. Women’s lower emissions are not only explained by their lower calorie requirements and shorter distances traveled: 25% of the food emissions gap and 38% of the transport emission gap remain unexplained after accounting for socioeconomic factors and the scale of consumption. Emissions from red meat and cars, two high-pollution goods, make up a disproportionate share of the residual gap, highlighting the potential role of consumption preferences and occupational choices tied to gender identity.

Work in progress

• The Long-term and Cumulative Effects of Air Pollution: Historical Evidence from France, with Julia Mink, Hélène Ollivier, Aurélien Saussay and Emeline Lequy-Flahault
  Abstract:

  
  

  This project aims to quantify the long-term societal cost of exposure to ambient air pollution. We consider a natural experiment that permanently decreased air pollution exposure in part of France in the 1980s: the early shutdown of coal and oil plants in the context of the transition to nuclear power. We use longitudinal census data combined with historical plant-level electricity data and an emission transport model to build novel measures of individual-level cumulative exposure to air pollution since the 1970s, accounting for lifelong residential history. We investigate the impact of air quality improvements induced by power plant closure on the health, educational and employment outcomes of exposed birth cohorts.

• Coal Phase-Out, Health and Human Capital, with Lucie Gadenne, Bobbie Upton and Rodrigo Toneto
• Cycling Infrastructure, Environmental Amenities and Voting, with Léa Bou-Sleiman

Peer-reviewed publications

Economics journals

• Carbon Pricing and Power Sector Decarbonisation: Evidence from the UK. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM), Volume 111, January 2022. [Working Paper], [Lay Summary]. Media Coverage: The Economist, L’Usine nouvelle
  Abstract:

  
  

  Decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation is crucial to tackle climate change. Empirically, however, little is known about the effectiveness of existing economic instruments in the power sector. This paper examines the impact of the UK Carbon Price Support (CPS), a carbon tax implemented in the UK power sector in 2013. Relative to a synthetic control unit built from other European countries, I find that emissions from the UK power sector declined by 20 to 26 percent per year on average between 2013 and 2017. The tax operated via three mechanisms: a decrease in emissions at the intensive margin; the closure of some high-emission plants at the extensive margin; and a higher probability of closure for plants already at risk due to European air quality regulations.

• Air Pollution and CO2 from Daily Mobility: Who Emits and Why? Evidence from Paris. (with Philippe Quirion). Energy Economics, Volume 109, May 2022. [Replication package], [Working Paper]. Media Coverage: Actu Environnement
  Abstract:

  
  

  Urban road transport is an important source of local pollution and carbon emissions. Designing effective and fair policies tackling these externalities requires understanding who contributes to emissions today. We estimate individual transport-induced pollution footprints combining a travel demand survey from the Paris area with NOx, PM2.5 and CO2 emission factors. We find that the top 20% emitters contribute 75-85% of emissions on a representative weekday. They combine longer distances travelled, a high car modal share and, especially for local pollutants, a higher emission intensity of car trips. Living in the suburbs, being a man and being employed are the most important characteristics associated with top emissions. Among the employed, those commuting from suburbs to suburbs, working at a factory, with atypical working hours or with a manual, shopkeeping or top executive occupation are more likely to be top emitters. Finally, policies targeting local pollution may be more regressive than those targeting CO2 emissions, due to the different correlation between income and the local pollutant vs. CO2 emission intensity of car trips.

Transdisciplinary journals

• Tackling Car Emissions in Urban Areas: Shift, Avoid, Improve. (with Philippe Quirion). Ecological Economics, Volume 213, November 2023. [Working Paper]. Media Coverage (in French) : The Conversation, France Culture
  Abstract:

  
  

  Car use imposes costly environmental externalities. We investigate to what extent car trips could be shifted to low-emission modes, avoided via teleworking, or improved via a transition to electric vehicles in the context of daily mobility in the Paris area. We derive counterfactual travel times for 45,000 car trips from a representative transport survey, and formulate modal shift scenarios including a maximum acceptable increase in travel time. For a daily travel time increase below 10 min, 46% of drivers could shift to e-bike – mostly – or public transit – rarely –, with half of them benefiting from a travel time decrease. Such modal shift would reduce daily mobility emissions by 15% and generate annual climate and health benefits worth €125 million. Factors such as living in the far suburbs, being male, or having a high income, are associated with inability to shift modes. Teleworking two days a week could save an additional 5% of emissions. Holding demand for mobility and public transport infrastructure fixed, greater emission reductions require improving cars' environmental performance via a transition to electric vehicles.

• Why investing in new nuclear plants is bad for the climate. (with Luke Haywood and Robert Pietzcker). Joule, Commentary, 1663–1678, August 2023. Media Coverage: Euractiv, PV Magazine, Focus

• The untapped health and climate potential of cycling in France: a national assessment from individual travel data (with Emilie Schwarz, Audrey de Nazelle, Philippe Quirion and Kévin Jean). The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, February 2024. Media Coverage (in French): The Conversation, Le Monde
  Abstract:

  
  

  Promoting active modes of transportation may generate important public health and climate mitigation benefits. We assess mortality and morbidity impacts of cycling in a country with relatively low levels of cycling, France, along with associated monetary benefits. We use individual data from a nationally-representative mobility survey conducted in 2019. We conducted a burden of disease analysis to assess the incidence of five chronic diseases and numbers of deaths prevented by cycling, based on national incidence and mortality data and dose-response relationships from meta-analyses. We assessed the corresponding direct medical cost savings and the intangible costs prevented based on the value of a statistical life year. The French adult (20-89 years) population was estimated to cycle on average of 1min 17sec per person per day in 2019, with important heterogeneity across gender and age. This yielded benefits of 1,919 (uncertainty interval, UI: 1,101-2,736) premature deaths and 5,963 (UI: 3,178-8,749) chronic disease cases prevented, with males enjoying nearly 75% of these benefits. Direct medical costs prevented were estimated at €191 million (UI: 98-285) annually, while the corresponding intangible costs were nearly 25 times higher (€4.8 billion, UI: 3.0-6.5). On average, €1.02 (UI: 0.59-1.62) of intangible costs were prevented for every km cycled. Shifting 25% of short car trips to biking would yield approximatively a 2-fold increase in the number of deaths prevented, while also reducing CO2 emissions by 0.257 MtCO2e (UI: 0.231-0.288).

Policy publications

• Exposure to air pollution in England, 2003–23, with Lucie Gadenne, Rodrigo Toneto and Bobbie Upton, IFS Report, December 2024. Media Coverage: The Independent

• The Energy and Climate Crisis Facing Europe: How to Strike the Right Balance, with Julius Andersson, FREE Policy Brief, May 2022

• [in French], Connaître et réduire les émissions polluantes dues au transport routier en Ile-de-France, with Philippe Quirion, Dossiers Mobilités Décarbonées: Enjeux et Solutions, Cerema & Construction 21, April 2021

Resting

• Estimating the Local Air Pollution Impacts of Maritime Traffic: A Principled Approach for Observational Data, with Leo Zabrocki and Marie-Abele Bind [Latest version]
  Abstract:

  
  

  We propose a new approach to estimate the causal effects of maritime traffic on air pollution when natural or policy experiments are not available. We apply this method to the case of Marseille, a large Mediterranean port city, where air pollution emitted by cruise vessels is a growing concern. Using a recent matching algorithm designed for time series data, we create hypothetical randomized experiments to estimate the change in local air pollution caused by a short-term increase in cruise traffic. We then rely on randomization inference to compute nonparametric 95% uncertainty intervals. We find that cruise vessels’ arrivals have large impacts on city-level hourly concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide. At the daily level, road traffic seems however to have a much larger impact than cruise traffic. Our procedure also helps assess in a transparent manner the identification challenges specific to this type of high-frequency time series data.