Working papers
Working papers
Resubmitted, Review of Economic Studies
CEPR discussion paper, Earlier (2024) version
Awards: EALE job market tour 2023, Restud tour 2023, W.E. Upjohn Institute dissertation award, Prix Jeune Docteur Banque de France
Abstract: This paper examines the effects of working time regulations on the allocation of workers and hours. I exploit a unique reform introducing a minimum workweek of 24 hours in France in 2014, affecting 15% of jobs. Drawing on administrative data and an event study design, I find a firm-level reduction in total hours worked, showing imperfect substitutability between workers and hours. The effects differ by gender: women working part-time were replaced by men working longer hours. Importantly, workers also reallocate between firms. To quantify the aggregate impact accounting for these effects, I build and estimate a search and matching model with firm and worker heterogeneity. Overall, the minimum workweek increased total hours worked by 1% due to positive general equilibrium effects, but concentrated hours among fewer workers as unemployment rose by 2%. Gender inequality increased because of the within-firm effects and less reallocation of women between firms.
Conflict in Dismissals (with Benjamin Schoefer), April 2025
NBER working paper, CEPR discussion paper, IPP Policy note (with Adrien Mangold), VoxEU column
Media: Les Echos, Le Monde, BFM, Le Figaro, Franceinfo, L'Express, Ouest France
Abstract: How do the employer and the worker interact during a dismissal? This paper tests whether they cooperate to minimize costs, or instead engage in conflict--i.e., deliberately amplify costs. We leverage a unique feature of the French labor market: an employer and a worker can jointly opt to replace a costly dismissal by a cheaper and more flexible ``separation by mutual agreement'' (SMA). Introduced in 2008, SMAs eliminate red tape costs, enable severance pay bargaining, and preclude litigation. However, we find that only 12% of dismissals are resolved through SMAs--far below the efficient level predicted by standard bargaining models. Surveying HR directors, we identify three drivers of conflict that hinder cost minimization: (i) hostility between the employer and the employee, (ii) employers using dismissals as a ``discipline device'' to maintain incentives, and (iii) asymmetric beliefs about subsequent labor court outcomes. Using counterfactual scenarios in the survey, we find that removing these three drivers of conflict would increase SMA adoption from 12% to 67% of dismissals. We confirm that less conflictual dismissals--due to either better employer-employee relationships or workers benefiting from early retirement--end more often as SMAs.
Location Effects or Sorting? Evidence from Firm Relocation (with Benny Kleinman and Elio Nimier-David), July 2026
Submitted.
NBER working paper (2025)
Abstract: What role do firms play in geographic wage disparities? This paper exploits establishment mobility as a novel source of identification to separate firm sorting from location treatment effects, i.e., the local wage premium for a given worker at a given firm (due to, e.g., geography, infrastructure, amenities). Using data from France and the U.S., we first document key facts about establishment relocation: 4% of establishments move each year, retaining their activity and structure while adjusting their workforce and wages. Combining establishment and worker mobility in France, we estimate a model that decomposes wage variation due to workers, firms, and locations. Spatial wage differences are primarily driven by sorting: worker composition accounts for 30%, firm composition for 17%, and their co-location for 34%. Residual location effects explain only 2–4%. Establishment sorting also accounts for most of the urban wage premium and the higher wage growth in larger cities.
Employment Protection Reforms: From Firm-Level Effects to Aggregate Outcomes (with Pierre Cahuc, Franck Malherbet and Pedro S. Martins), September 2026
Submitted.
Abstract: Employment protection legislation often varies with firm or establishment size and age, and many evaluations of EPL reforms exploit these thresholds. This paper develops a search-and-matching model with multi-establishment firms to disentangle direct effects from general-equilibrium spillovers. We combine the model with quasi-experimental evidence from a 2009 Portuguese reform that restricted fixed-term contracts in young establishments of large firms. Spillovers barely distort the reduced-form estimate, yet they overturn the aggregate conclusion: extrapolating the reduced-form estimate implies a 1.51% employment decline, compared with a 0.11% increase in general equilibrium. Counterfactuals show that conditioning EPL on size versus age can yield opposite welfare effects, even when employment effects are similar, and that fixed-term contract and firing restrictions must be evaluated jointly.
Selected work in progress
The Effects of a Shorter Workweek on Employment, Output, and Productivity (with Claire Montialoux, Elio Nimier-David, Alexandra Roulet and Nina Roussille)
Policy work
Note on the effects of introduction of separations by mutual agreement in France (with Adrien Mangold and Benjamin Schoefer), published by IPP, November 2025
Evaluation of the impact of the severance scale for unfair dismissals, (with Pierre Cahuc, Stéphane Carcillo, Flavien Moreau and Bérengère Patault), 2023
Media: Le Monde, BFM TV, FranceInfo
Older work (from dissertation)
Employment Effects of Restricting Fixed-Term Contracts: Theory and Evidence (with Pierre Cahuc, Franck Malherbet and Pedro S. Martins), 2022
IZA discussion paper, VoxEU column
Media: Expresso, Portuguese Economy Research Report, Atlantico