Working Papers
Contractual Risk Transfer and the Pace of Fibre Deployment: Evidence from French Public Initiative Networks
with Mehdi Guelmamen and Maëlis Renault
Submitted in Information Economics and Policy
Special Mention, AFED 2026
Abstract: How should public authorities share investment risk with private partners when deploying infrastructure? We study this question in the context of fibre broadband rollout in France's public initiative networks (Réseaux d'Initiative Publique), where local authorities choose between contractual arrangements that transfer investment risk to the private operator to different degrees. Using a quarterly panel of 56 networks from 2018 to 2026, built from ARCEP open data, we find that networks operated under concession contracts, where the private partner bears the investment risk, cover their remaining territory 4.6 percentage points faster per quarter than other networks. This amounts to roughly fifteen months of advance in serving a territory. The effect is concentrated among small and medium-sized networks. Hybrid contracts combining lease and concession features behave like lease contracts, which suggests that partial risk transfer does not deliver the same incentives as full transfer.
Work in Progress
When Does Public Procurement Improve Regional Outcomes? Evidence on Sectoral Composition and Institutional Quality
Public procurement is the main channel through which regional public investment in health and education is delivered, but its social returns are not automatic. Using an original panel of 233 EU regions (2006–2023), built from contract-level TED procurement data linked to Eurostat indicators, I show that aggregate procurement intensity has only a weak and inconsistent association with regional outcomes. Clear patterns emerge once procurement is broken down by sector and interacted with institutional quality, measured by the European Quality of Government Index. Health procurement is associated with higher life expectancy, and this association strengthens with institutional quality. Education procurement is associated with lower early school leaving. The results suggest that institutional quality determines whether procurement delivers on its social objectives, with implications for how EU cohesion policy targets regions of varying administrative capacity.
Public Procurement and Educational Outcomes: Evidence from Primary Education in French Municipalities (2015–2024)
with Vincent Jardine
In France, curricula and teachers are managed nationally, but municipalities are responsible for primary school infrastructure, equipment and services, which they purchase through public contracts. We combine the BeauAMP database of public contracts with standardized test scores at entry into lower secondary school to build a municipality-level panel. We then estimate the causal effect of school-targeted spending using recent difference-in-differences methods. We find no significant effect of procurement on average test scores. The one exception is construction projects, which lower test scores in the short run, an effect concentrated in larger and richer municipalities.