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 face 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.

The Effect of Energy Efficiency Obligations on Residential Energy Consumption and the Abatement Cost of Carbon,  with Matthieu Glachant. Working Paper.

We evaluate the French CEE program, the largest energy efficiency obligation scheme in Europe. Using municipality-level panel data covering 4,774 municipalities over the period 2018–2020, we estimate its impact on energy use and carbon emissions. We show that official reporting overstates energy savings by at least 59%. We then develop a novel method to estimate the program’s average carbon abatement cost using the tradability of energy-saving certificates. Our preferred estimate is €150 per ton of CO₂ equivalent, falling to €52 per ton when accounting for program-induced energy price increases. The program thus appears to be cost-effective overall.