Work In Progress
An Optimal Distribution of Polluting Activities Across Space
Should air quality policies target industries within the largest cities? On the one hand, we should seek to reduce atmospheric pollutants’ emissions in places where most of the population is concentrated. On the other hand, more stringent policies can hurt local industries and targeting the cities that contribute the most economically may decrease welfare. Extending recent quantitative spatial economics models, I analyze these counteracting forces. I find that when the local damages from pollution are not internalized by the industry and workers react to low air quality through migration, the largest cities can be too small. As a result, an optimal set of policies imposes higher emission taxes in these locations relative to the rest of the country. I estimate the model using French data and find that current policies impose higher costs of emissions in larger cities but raising them even higher could achieve welfare gains.
Co-authored with Geoffrey Barrows, Raphael Calel & Hélène Ollivier
This paper presents a method for estimating treatment effects of regulations when treated and control firms compete on the output market. We develop a GMM estimator that recovers reduced-form parameters consistent with a model of differentiated product markets with multi-plant firms, and use these estimates to evaluate counterfactual revenues and emissions. Our procedure recovers unbiased estimates of treatment effects in Monte Carlo experiments, while difference-in-differences estimators and other popular methods do not. In an application, we find that the European carbon market reduced emissions at regulated plants without undermining revenues of regulated firms, relative to an unregulated counterfactual.
The effects of local pollution on international exports Evidence from PM2.5 & French Firms Co-authored with Geoffrey Barrows & Hélène Ollivier
Local atmospheric pollution has adverse effects on workers’ individual health and productivity. However, little is known about the aggregated consequences on the economic performances of the firms where these people work. In this paper we seek to identify such firm and plant-level effects from local pollution episodes. Such estimates may be important from a policy perspective to the extent that they could reveal that economic benefits from air quality policies are larger if economy-wide impacts on production are considered in addition the pollution impact on health. Our approach relies on very disaggregated geographic information on local air quality and plant-level economic outcomes.
The Environmental Impact of Working From Home with Rainald Borck (University of Potsdam), Efthymia Kyriakopoulou (SLU), and Pierre Picard (University of Luxembourg)
Journal Articles
Biomass for energy in the EU – The support framework - Energy Policy, 2019
Co-authored with Manjola Banja, Richard Sikkema, Vincenzo Motola & Jean-François Dallemand
This paper aims to produce a quantitative approach on the overall measures and on public support framework for biomass for energy, based on the EU countries reports under RED and existing literature. The way in which the support for biomass is implemented in the EU energy sector is not similar across EU countries. Feed-in tariffs and feed-in-premiums are still the dominant support schemes for the deployment of bioelectricity, whereas subsidies remain the main support for bioheat. Furthermore, a vast number of EU countries apply mandatory blending quotas for biofuels for transport. The paper shows that biomass for energy has a key role within the EU policy support for RES, in which targets are the main drivers, together with overarching biomass guidelines to anticipate any environmental constraints. Stable support showed the highest effectiveness in the past and remains the key factor for biomass deployment beyond 2020. The renewed targets need to be accompanied by long-term support measures and a commonly shared policy vision. A further harmonization of public bioenergy support towards a single EU cleaner energy market is recommended. This implies four policy actions for all EU countries: in-depth efficiency review, integration with RED-2, compatible sustainability guidelines and local impact assessments.
Support for biogas in the EU electricity sector – A comparative analysis - Biomass and Bioenergy, 2019
Co-authored with Manjola Banja, Richard Sikkema & Vincenzo Motola
This paper aims to present a comparative analysis of biogas electricity deployment in EU countries over the period of 2010–2017. The analysis shows that the deployment of biogas electricity is mainly linked to the moment of the shift in the support framework, the maturity of tenders and the feasibility of long-term objectives. With 200 incentives in place the EU has created favourable conditions to support biogas electricity. Manure and waste are the main feedstocks of biogas electricity in the EU that receive the highest incentives. However, the recent shift towards capacity market mechanism has had an adverse effect in the deployment of biogas electricity. The way in which the biogas is currently valorised, has not been very effective in some EU countries. We found that the EU average growth rate of biogas electricity over 2016–2017 dropped 4 times compared with 2014–2016. Plans/targets have been very supportive in the fast deployment of biogas electricity. Nevertheless, a clear post 2020 picture for renewables is still missing in several EU countries that are risking lagging in biogas electricity deployment. The future of biogas is been seen promising on the upgrade to biomethane as a sustainable input for environment and economy.