Working Papers

Wired For Change? Clean Technology Adoption and Labor Market Transitions, Job Market Paper.

I investigate the effect of clean technology adoption on labor market outcomes. I leverage a demand-side heat pump subsidy shock in France that triggered supply-side adoption by heating firms, creating a natural experiment for studying worker adjustment. Using matched employer-employee data, I find establishment-level adoption increases both job creation and separations, indicating within-firm labor reallocation. Workers experience an average +10% rise in hours worked and +12% rise in earnings, challenging fears of severe adaptation costs. Decomposing by worker type, I find that stayers drive the results, with 20% higher hours and earnings. Both leavers and newcomers incur initial losses; however, within one year, leavers are overcompensated and newcomers recover to baseline. Subsidy-driven technology adoption therefore results in low transition costs, avoiding mass displacement and directly updating workers' skills. 

Overpromising Green Jobs? Evidence from the French Energy Efficiency Obligations Program, with François Cohen and Victor Kahn, Mar. 2025. Working Paper; Slides EEA 2025.

Concerns over job losses are eroding support for climate action. The EU Green Deal promises one million jobs by 2030, with energy efficiency as key driver. However, projections rely on unverified ex-ante estimates. This paper provides the first ex-post estimate of employment impacts from a large-scale energy efficiency programme. Using a policy discontinuity in France and a state-of-the-art synthetic control method on disaggregated data, we find 2.2 job-years created per million euro invested, far below the 8.52 jobs assumed in EU assessments. We find no evidence of a major labor shortage, as transition costs are low and wages remain stable. However, only 10% of the subsidy increase translates into new hires, while 28% is absorbed into firms’ value added. Hence, rent capture by local energy-efficiency installers leads to an inefficiency in the use of the subsidies, potentially undermining the green transition.

How Costly Is Carbon Abatement in the Residential Sector? Evidence from Energy Efficiency Obligations,  with Matthieu Glachant. Working Paper.

We evaluate the French Energy Savings Certificates program, under which energy retailers subsidize building retrofits to meet mandatory efficiency targets. Using sub-municipal electricity and gas data from 5 million housing units (2018–2021), we first estimate its impact on energy use and associated carbon emissions. We then develop a novel revealed-preference approach to measure the average carbon abatement cost, leveraging the tradability of certificates. Combining certificate prices with estimated energy savings and emissions factors yields a preferred estimate of €104 per ton of CO2e. Accounting for the pass-through of program costs into retail energy prices and the resulting reduction in energy demand lowers this to €65 per ton, indicating overall cost-effectiveness. This is despite official reports overstating realized energy savings by 69%.