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Work in progress:
How the Grenfell Fire Spread Across the UK: Housing Markets and Risk Perception
How the Grenfell Fire Spread Across the UK: Housing Markets and Risk Perception
(with Stanimira Milcheva and Heli Song)
(with Stanimira Milcheva and Heli Song)
We examine how the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire reshaped the pricing and market functioning of housing exposed to fire-safety risk. Using property transactions, sales and rental listings across England and Wales, we estimate causal effects using a doubly robust difference-in-differences framework that exploits variation in building safety status and floor level. Buildings identified for remediation experienced a 4.0\% decline in achieved prices, a 5.3\% decline in asking prices, and a 4.0\% decline in asking rents, alongside a 16\% fall in completed transactions and sharp increases in for-sale (43\%) and rental (60\%) listings. We also find a 12\% decline in prices and a 5\% reduction in transactions for high-floor apartments in otherwise safe buildings, consistent with a revaluation of high-floor living following Grenfell. Safety upgrades subsequently increased completed transactions by 33\% and for-sale listings by 29\%, but achieved prices did not recover. These results show that post-disaster risk can generate persistent housing-market effects through changes in perceived safety and transaction frictions, with remediation restoring market liquidity more quickly than property values.
When Leases Get Longer: Tenure Security in Rental Markets
When Leases Get Longer: Tenure Security in Rental Markets
(with Jordi Jofre-Monseny, Mariona Segú and Alessandro Ciardo)
This paper evaluates the effects of Spain's 2019 reform extending minimum rental lease length from three to five or seven years. Using administrative data for Catalonia and a regression discontinuity design around the reform date, we show that the reform substantially increased stated lease length for both individual and corporate landlords. In the short run, individual landlords adjust through a modest price increase, while corporate landlords anticipate the reform by rushing to sign leases before its implementation. We find no evidence of market exit or displacement toward seasonal leases in the short run. In the medium run, tenant stability rises markedly for both landlord types: tenants are more likely to remain in the same dwelling 4.5 years later. For individual landlords, who were already inclined to retain their tenants, the reform changes the contractual form of this continuity---from renewed leases to uninterrupted spells under the original lease. For corporate landlords, a longer minimum lease duration increases tenant stability among those who sign contracts, but discourages part of the market by inducing exit.
Retail Competition Across the Border
Retail Competition Across the Border
(with Felippe Carozzi and Ignacio Gonzalez)
(with Felippe Carozzi and Ignacio Gonzalez)
Cross-border shopping is a feature of retail markets located near national borders.
How do retailers in these markets respond to the presence of cross-border shopping opportunities for consumers? We study this question by focusing on the frontier region between Uruguay and Argentina over the 2018–2023 period. A sharp appreciation of the US dollar in Argentine informal markets led to the world’s largest real exchange rate swing for neighbouring countries in this period. As a result of the ensuing shift in demand across the border, there was a 20% reduction in revenues for Uruguayan grocery stores. Uruguayan retailers increased their prices by 1.5% in response to the induced reduction in demand. We rationalize these findings using a model of cross-border trade with heterogeneous transport costs, where large shocks may induce retailers to focus on captive immobile consumers, resulting in price increases despite reduced demand.
Effect of a one-percentatge point increase of the unemployment rate at the time of graduation on housing tenure.
Special mention on Nada es Gratis. Submitted
Young adults worldwide face significant challenges in leaving their parental homes. By exploiting the unemployment rate across European college graduates at the time of their graduation, I provide causal evidence that poor initial labour market conditions have adverse and long-lasting effects on housing tenure and affordability. This pushes young adults into living with their parents, while increasing their reliance on parental aid and housing allowances. I develop an overlapping generations model and calibrate it to the conditions of the Great Recession, showing that intergenerational cash transfers and housing allowances substantially mitigate these scarring effects. The model also offers policy insights into facilitating household formation.
“Rents without markets” with Cristina Bratu, Sander Ramboer and Arnaldur Stefansson. 2026.
“Rents without markets” with Cristina Bratu, Sander Ramboer and Arnaldur Stefansson. 2026.
Publications:
Publications:
Example of the final dataset using the city of Málaga, with elevation, constructed buildings and flood plains.
(with Pierre Magontier)
Journal of Urban Economics Insights. Volume 152, March 2026, 103831
This paper examines the effects of floods on urban development dynamics using geolocalized data on the universe of buildings in Spain from 1996 to 2021. We provide empirical evidence that floods promote local urban development, resulting in taller, more compact urban layouts that attract populations, increase property values, and shift land use away from the agricultural and industrial sectors. We argue that adaptive responses to natural disasters may trigger positive local spillovers strong enough to overcompensate for the flood’s destructive nature.
(with Miquel-Àngel García-López, Jordi Jofre-Monseny, and Mariona Segú).
Journal of Urban Economics, vol. 119, September 2020.
In this paper, we assess the impact of Airbnb on housing rents and prices in the city of Barcelona. Examining very detailed data on rents and both transaction and posted prices, we use several econometric approaches that exploit the exact timing and geography of Airbnb activity in the city. These include i) panel fixed-effects models, where we run multiple specifications that allow for different forms of heterogeneous time trends across neighborhoods, ii) an instrumental variables shift-share approach in which tourist amenities predict where Airbnb listings will locate and Google searches predict when listings appear, iii) event-study designs, and iv) finally, we present evidence from Sagrada Familia, a major tourist amenity that is not found in the city centre. Our main results imply that for the average neighborhood, Airbnb activity has increased rents by 1.9%, transaction prices by 4.6% and posted prices by 3.7%. The estimated impact in neighborhoods with high Airbnb activity is substantial. For neighborhoods in the top decile of Airbnb activity distribution, rents are estimated to have increased by 7%, while increases in transaction (posted) prices are estimated at 17% (14%).
Media Coverage:
Median effect of Airbnb's Activity on transaction prices across Barcelona
(with Jordi Jofre-Monseny, and Mariona Segú)
Regional Science and Urban Economics, 103916.
Concerns related to housing affordability are widespread in cities worldwide, and discussions about adopting rent control policies abound. This paper studies the effects of a rent control policy adopted in Catalonia in September 2020 that applies to some but not all municipalities. The policy virtually covers all the rental market and forces ads and tenancy agreements to specify the applicable rent cap to ensure enforcement. In order to identify the causal effect of the rent control regulation, we implement difference-in-differences regressions and event-study designs and analyze average rents and the number of tenancy agreements signed. Our results indicate that the regulation reduced average rents paid by about 6%. However, this price drop did not lead to a reduction in the supply of housing units in the rental market. We implement several robustness tests to address several identification concerns related to Covid-19. Our results suggest that rent control policies can be effective in reducing rental prices and do not necessarily shrink the rental market.
Media Coverage:
Papers: Regió Metropolitana de Barcelona, (66), 11-24.
Los problemas de asequibilidad en la vivienda no se restringen ya a las grandes ciudades ni a los hogares de menores ingresos, siendo una realidad particularmente notoria para los que viven de alquiler. La evidencia indica que esta crisis se deriva de varias fuentes, desde las regulaciones en la oferta habitacional, la creciente desigualdad en el ingreso en los países desarrollados, la aparición de nuevas tecnologías relacionadas con alojamiento turístico, hasta las tasas de interés y restricciones al crédito. La falta de vivienda asequible afecta a los individuos, comprometiendo el acceso a la comida, la salud o la educación, en particular en la infancia. En términos agregados, la crisis implica un impacto negativo en el crecimiento económico con consecuencias demográficas. Este artículo repasa las principales medidas que los gobiernos nacionales y locales han adoptado para revertir la situación y su efectividad. En particular, se discute la evidencia teórica y empírica más reciente sobre los controles de alquiler. Entender las causas y las consecuencias detrás de la falta de vivienda asequible es fundamental para proyectar ciudades sostenibles en el futuro.
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