Research
Peer-reviewed articles
Diversity and Employment Prospects: Neighbors Matter! with Clément Malgouyres (Paris School of Economics), Journal of Human Resources (July 2018)
Abstract: This paper explores how diversity affects individuals’ employment prospects, using recent data from the French Labor Force Survey. Employment correlates positively with local labor market diversity, but negatively with neighborhood diversity. Using an instrumental variable approach to deal with local labor market diversity drives the positive correlation to zero, supporting the intuition that immigrants self-select into more economically dynamic areas. Taking advantage of the very precise localization of the data, we correct biases related to residential sorting and confirm the negative effect of neighborhood diversity. We also show that diversity in terms of nationalities (a proxy for cultural diversity) matters more than diversity based on parents’ origins (a proxy for ethnic diversity), giving insights on the underlying mechanisms.
Next train to the polycentric city: The effect of railroads on subcenter formation, with Miquel-Àngel Garcia-López (UAB and IEB) and Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal (UB and IEB), Regional Science and Urban Economics (November 2017)
Abstract: Recent evidence reveals that transportation’s improvements within metropolitan areas have a clear effect on population and job decentralization processes. Yet, very little has been said on how these improvements affect the spatial organization of the economic activity in the suburbs. This paper analyses the effects of transportation’s changes on employment subcenters formation. Using data from metropolitan Paris between 1968 and 2010, we first show that rail network improvements cause the expected job decentralization by attracting jobs to suburban municipalities. Our main contribution is to show that the new rail transit clearly affects the spatial organization of employment through the number and size of the employment subcenters: not only does the presence of a rail station increase the probability of a suburban municipality of belonging to a subcenter by 5 to 10 %, but a 10 % increase in municipality proximity to a suburban station is found to increase its chance to be part of a subcenter by 3 to 5 %.
How Does Transportation Shape Intrametropolitan Growth? An Answer From the Regional Express Rail, with Miquel-Àngel Garcia-López (UAB and IEB) and Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal (UB and IEB), Journal of Regional Science (November 2017)
Abstract: This paper analyzes the influence of transportation infrastructure, and in particular of the Regional Express Rail (RER), on employment and population growth in the Paris metropolitan area between 1968 and 2010. In order to make proper causal inference, we rely on historical instruments and control for all other transportation modes that could be complement or substitute to the RER. A dynamic analysis accounting for spatial heterogeneity reveals that for municipalities located less than 13 kilometers from an RER station, each kilometer closer to the station increases employment and population growth by 12% and 8% respectively. Regarding the time pattern of these effects, we find no impact of the RER expansion on employment growth during the first part of the period, while the effect on population growth appears earlier but declines over time.
The Social Effects of Ethnic Diversity at the Local Level: a Natural Experiment with Exogenous Residential Allocation, with Yann Algan and David Laitin, Journal of Political Economy (June 2016)
Abstract: This paper demonstrates the effects of ethnic diversity on social relationships and the quality of public spaces at a very finite neighborhood level. We use detailed block level data on diversity and housing quality from a representative survey on housing in France. We show how and to what extent diversity within a neighborhood can directly affect household well-being and the quality of the common spaces, whereas the previous literature looks at more aggregate outcomes through voting channels. Our identification strategy relies on the exogeneity of public housing allocations with respect to ethnic characteristics in France, to address the bias due to endogenous residential sorting. Diversity is shown to have a negative effect on the quality of local public goods, either due to vandalism, not deterred by other-regarding preferences and social policing, or due to collective action failure to ensure effective property management. However, we find that diversity has no robust effect on public safety at a local level and, if anything, is more related to social anomie.
Book Chapters
Les effets du RER sur la localisation et la croissance de l’emploi : une analyse économétrique, with M-À Garcia-López et E. Viladecans-Marsal, chapter 11 in Les effets économiques et urbains du Grand Paris Express, Economica, 2019.
Diversity and well-being: local effects and causal approaches, Chapter 2 in Social cohesion and immigration in Europe and North America. Mechanisms, conditions, causality, Routledge Editions, Jan. 2015