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Publications
Publications
Revue Economique, 74(5): 805-831, 2023
Working Papers
Working Papers
The Health Consequences of Job Loss: Evidence from France
Best Paper Award, CINCH-dggö Academy in Health Economics (2024)
Abstract: This paper investigates the consequences of job loss on a wide range of health outcomes in France, a country with generous unemployment benefits and universal health insurance. I build a new dataset by combining administrative panel data from a French epidemiological cohort with matched employer-employee data. Focusing on exogenous job losses resulting from establishment closures, I implement a difference-in-differences approach in which I examine the evolution of the health outcomes of 20,000 treated workers relative to those of a comparable control group. My results highlight the adverse effects of job loss on mental health. Displaced workers experience a 19% increase in the use of antidepressants and anxiolytics and a 20% rise in the likelihood of consulting a psychiatrist in the short run. Hospital admissions increase by 13%. Additionally, the probability of receiving disability benefits more than doubles after displacement. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that specific vulnerable populations, including older workers, low-skilled workers, and workers living in areas with high unemployment rates, are more severely impacted by job loss. The perspective of re-employment also plays an important role in mitigating the consequences on mental health.
Presentations: CREST 1st year PhD students Workshop (Paris, 2022); CREST Firms & Markets Seminar (Paris, 2023); QMUL PhD Workshop (London, 2023); Royal Economic Society PhD Conference (Glasgow, 2023); AFSE Annual Congress (Paris, 2023); Economics of Mental Health Workshop (London, 2023); LAGV (Marseille, 2023); EEA-ESEM Congress (Barcelona, 2023); JESF (Bordeaux, 2023); ADRES Job Market Conference (Paris, 2024); HEFUU Centre for Health Economic Research (Uppsala, 2024); CINCH-dggö Academy in Health Economics (Essen, 2024); Séminaire des Jeunes Chercheurs de la cohorte Constances (online, 2024); CEE-M (Montpellier, 2024)
Cross-country comparison of ex-ante sugar tax evaluations: Evidence from the biscuit, non-alcoholic beverage, and dairy dessert markets in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, with Olivier Allais, Céline Bonnet and Maxime Tranchard - Submitted
Abstract: Obesity represents a growing global challenge, with significant health and economic consequences. One of the main drivers of this epidemic is excessive sugar intake. Public policies such as education campaigns and product labelling have shown limited effectiveness, leading to increasing interest in fiscal measures like sugar taxes. While taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages have demonstrated reductions in consumption, evidence remains limited regarding their extension to other high-sugar products. This study assesses the potential impacts of sugar taxation policies in France, the United Kingdom, and Spain on three key product categories that contribute substantially to sugar intake: non-alcoholic beverages, biscuits, and dairy desserts. Using nationally representative scanner data and a structural econometric model, we estimate demand, model firm pricing behavior under oligopolistic competition, and simulate the effects of a two-tiered sugar-based tax. Results indicate that firms generally over-shift the tax to prices, leading to significant reductions in purchases and sugar intake, with the largest impacts observed in non-alcoholic beverages and French dairy desserts. The tax is particularly effective among households with overweight or obese adults. Although consumer surplus and firm profits decline, these losses are outweighed by fiscal revenues and reductions in the social costs of excessive sugar intake. Overall, our findings suggest that extending sugar taxes to other food and drink products can reduce sugar consumption and generate positive welfare effects. We then provide valuable evidence for policymakers considering broader fiscal measures to address diet-related health challenges.
Work in progress
Work in progress
Automation at the Workplace: Implications for Workers' Health, with Pauline Lesterquy
Technological progress has profoundly transformed employment, reshaping job content with varying effects across different skills and occupations. Yet, its overall impact on workers’ well-being has received limited attention. This project addresses this gap by examining the effects of automation adoption at the firm level on workers' healthcare use, considering both physical and mental dimensions. We identify workers directly exposed to workplace automation by combining French individual records with firm-level data from customs and balance sheets in the manufacturing sector.
Presentations: CREST PhD Seminar (Paris, 2023); AMSE PhD Seminar (Marseille, 2024); Brown Bag Seminar (Uppsala, 2024); IFAU (Uppsala, 2024); SHEA (Uppsala, 2024); LAGV (Marseille, 2024); EuHEA PhD Conference (Lucerne, 2024); EALE (Bergen, 2024); Health Economics Lab in Paris Seminar (Paris, 2024); CREST PhD Seminar (Paris, 2024); PSL-Dauphine-PSE Workshop on Behaviors, Health and Ageing (Paris, 2024); LIEN Seminar (Nanterre, 2024); Afépop (Marseille, 2025); AFSE (Paris, 2025); EEA Congress (Bordeaux, 2025)
Are Sugar Taxes Well Designed? Empirical evidence from the UK soft drink market, with Olivier Allais, Céline Bonnet, Maxime Tranchard
Policymakers have increasingly implemented nutritional taxes to influence consumer behavior toward healthier diets, with the efficiency of these taxes largely depending on their design. While theoretical and empirical literature suggest that taxes should be proportional to the harm caused, most nutritional taxes implemented to date, including sugar taxes, feature tiered rather than linear designs. This inconsistency between theory and practice raises the question: can tiered taxes be optimal, and if so, how should their key components be set? In this paper, we evaluate the performance of tiered sugar tax designs compared to the theoretically optimal linear tax. Using a welfare maximization framework, we account for externalities from excess sugar consumption, heterogeneous consumption patterns, and firms' strategic pricing behavior.
Wildfires, Air Pollution and Labor Market Outcomes, with Simon Briole
Climate change, through rising average temperatures, more frequent heatwaves, and longer droughts, is expected to increase the frequency and severity of wildfires worldwide. Beyond their immediate ecological damage, wildfires impose substantial human, economic, and health costs. Exposure to wildfire smoke has been linked to higher rates of respiratory diseases and increased mortality. These events also contribute to climate-related anxiety and psychological distress. This project aims to understand whether this environmental hazard may also affect professional careers.
Policy work
Policy work
Assessment of the potential impacts of new fiscal policies on added sugar in France, Spain and the United Kingdom, with Olivier Allais, Céline Bonnet, Maxime Tranchard. H2020 Science & Technology in childhood Obesity Policy (2022)
Abstract: Children in the Western world are currently consuming more added sugar than the 10% of total daily energy intake recommended by the World Health Organisation. The excessive consumption of added sugars is associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes. To address these public health issues, public health authorities have implemented or envisage to tax food products that contribute the most to the sugar intake of children and adolescents. Existing taxes are generally limited to sugar-sweetened beverages. Very little is known about the potential effects of a similar tax for products other than for non-alcoholic beverages, and household characteristics, such as the presence of children and/or adolescents in the household, are rarely taken into account in the analysis. The main objective of this study is to assess and compare the effects of several hypothetical tax designs on variations in purchases of non-alcoholic beverages and biscuits, and on individuals’ sugar purchases from the consumption of these products, which are also major contributors to sugar intake in children and adolescents, using a wide range of indicators to characterize households. Household composition (households with versus without children and adolescents, the presence of overweight or obese adults in the household), and the household’s socioeconomic position are used to characterize households. To achieve these objectives, we use household scanner data to propose ex-ante evaluations and comparisons of the effects of different tax designs, already existing or designed in the same spirit as existing ones, on the purchased quantity on the non-alcoholic beverages and biscuits markets made by households in the United Kingdom (UK), France and Spain. Estimates of demand curves are combined with a supply model of oligopolistic price competition to produce simulations of tax effects that integrate firms’ price reactions to tax. Demand in the UK markets for non-alcoholic beverages and biscuits is more elastic than in the Spanish and French markets and across all household characteristics considered. Second, biscuits demand is less price elastic than the demand for non-alcoholic beverages whatever the household characteristics considered, except in the UK. We also find that all tax scenarios simulated reach their goal: To increase the purchase of the less sugar-sweetened biscuits or non-alcoholic beverages at the expense of the more sugar-sweetened ones. Among the four tax designs analysed, the UK tax design (i.e., a two-tiered excise tax based on the total sugar content of products with relatively high levels of tax rates) is the most effective in reducing sugar purchase from either nonalcoholic beverages and the biscuits markets in France, the UK and Spain. Second, implementing a tax in the non-alcoholic beverage market results in higher sugar purchase reductions than in the biscuits markets. Rising the tax rate levels increases reductions in sugar purchase. These reductions will be all the larger the more price-sensitive households are and the higher the proportion of purchases of products taxed at each threshold in relation to total purchases. These results highlight the importance of (i) choosing to tax ’unhealthy’ food categories consumed in excess where households are the most price sensitive, and (ii) appropriately choosing the levels of tax tiers based on the distribution of purchases of taxed products with respect to sugar content.
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