I am a PhD candidate at the Center for Economic Research within the École normale supérieure de Lyon, where I will defend my dissertation in June 2026.
I am currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Brown University (October-December 2025).
Since 2022, I have visited the University of Chicago Harris School, the University of Oxford, and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Since 2024, I am also a research fellow at the University of Bologna, as part of the ERC GENPOP.
My research spans political economy, public finance, development, and growth. I use applied methods, economic theory, and historical data to address issues fundamental to long-run development, including state-building and tax resistance, and structural and demographic change.
I am on the job market 2025-2026. My job market paper examines the political consequences of tax enforcement. You can also read my research statement.
Job Market Paper
The Political Costs of Taxation, with Eva Davoine and Igor Kolesnikov.
CESifo Working Paper, EU Tax Observatory Working Paper, SSRN Working Paper.
Presented at the NBER Summer Institute (Political Economy). International Institute of Public Finance PhD award. Finalist for the CESIfo Distinguished Affiliate Award (Public Economics).
Abstract
We examine the political costs of taxation in early modern France. We focus on efforts to enforce the salt tax, the rate of which varied across regions. Using a spatial difference-in-discontinuities design, we compare municipalities just inside the high-tax region with those just outside, before and after a reform aimed at curbing illicit salt smuggling. We find that tax enforcement led to a tenfold increase in conflicts between taxpayers and the state in municipalities in the high-tax region. This effect persists until the French Revolution, consistent with the idea that salt tax enforcement had significant political costs. Finally, we document that the likelihood of conflict increases with tax differences between neighboring regions, which we use to derive an upper bound on the political costs of increased tax enforcement in this historical period.
Presentations
EHA 2022 (single-authored poster), SDU Workshop, EHS, FRESH Louvain, ASREC Europe, LSE Economic History graduate seminar, Carlo Alberto Workshop, CESIfo Political Economy Dresden, Bologna Internal Seminar, CEPR Paris Symposium (poster), CEPR micro-applied Economic History workshop, CESifo Public Economics Conference, CEPR Economic History Symposium, NBER Summer Institute Political Economy, Brown Growth Breakfast, Brown Undergraduate Lecture.
Drafts
The Race between Lewis and Malthus, solo-authored.
Abstract
This paper studies how the fertility transition affects structural change, focusing on heterogeneity in demographic behavior. I show that differential fertility along sectoral lines can hinder the reallocation of rural labor into more productive sectors, thereby slowing aggregate structural transformation. I document this pattern across multiple developing contexts, both historical and contemporary. To explore the underlying mechanisms, I develop a two-sector overlapping generations model that combines Malthusian and Lewisian dynamics, featuring endogenous fertility and labor mobility. I estimate the model using a novel subdistrict-year-level demographic dataset from colonial India, providing new empirical evidence on rural-urban differences in mortality and fertility. Finally, I conduct counterfactual analyses to assess the potential impact of public policies on India's long-run development path.
Presentations
WEHC 2022, AHEC Bangkok 2022, ADRES 2023, EHS 2023 (poster), Oxford ESH Graduate Seminar, Lewis Lab Graduate Workshop, LORDE 2023, ENS Lyon-Bologna Workshop 2023, LAGV 2023, World Cliometrics 2023, INET Mumbai 2024, Bologna GENPOP seminar, AHEC Hong-Kong 2024.
Extraction or Evasion? The Limits of Coercive State-Building, with Eva Davoine and Victor Gay.
Abstract
This paper examines compliance with the salt tax in early modern France. Using an original dataset of salt sales and prices and exploiting spatial variation in exposure to smuggling, we estimate counterfactual salt sales under full compliance, and quantify the fiscal consequences of evasion. Half of salt sales were evaded in the most affected districts, resulting in an aggregate revenue loss of about 15% in 1665. Evasion is significantly lower one century later, due to stricter enforcement. To validate our approach, we study a 1680 reform that relaxed enforcement in districts unaffected by smuggling and confirm that our estimates capture genuine differences in compliance. We find no relationship between salt tax evasion and income tax revenues or public goods, and no evidence of strategic adjustment of the tax rate--leaving enforcement as the sole anti-fraud instrument.
Presentations
EHES 2025, French Economic History Online Seminar.
A Historical Geographic Information System of the Grandes Gabelles in Early Modern France, with Eva Davoine, Victor Gay and Igor Kolesnikov. Note (preliminary and incomplete)
Presentations
ENCHOS and Valencia Population Workshop 2025.
Ongoing Research
Genealogies. With Nicola Barban, Thomas Baudin, Guillaume Blanc, Matthew Curtis, Paula Gobbi, Simone Moriconi, and Robert Stelter.
Grounded Ideologies: Soil Permeability, Human Settlement, and Political Preferences. With Étienne Le Rossignol.
Taxation, Specialization, and the Formation of Cultural Traits. With Eva Davoine and Étienne Le Rossignol.
Global Human Development Over Five Millennia: Evidence from Expert Elicitation. With Jean-Pascal Bassino.
Other Research
Expand
Military Registers Project, with Killian Barrère, Cédric Chambru, Guillaume Daudin and Alexis Litvine.
More
Developing new machine learning tools for the automated recognition of archival documents, we construct an individual database of French soldiers for the 18th and 19th century, which will be foundational to answer a range of questions related to state capacity and development.World Military Capacity Database, with Kpêdido Godonou.
More
Development of a LLM-based API for automated construction of a database of military conflicts extracted from multilingual Wikipedia. Presented at EHES 2023.I4R Replication Report of “How Merchant Towns Shaped Parliaments: From the Norman Conquest of England to the Great Reform Act” (Angelucci et al., 2022), with Cédric Chambru, Thibaut Mirabel & Bastien Tourenc, 2024.
Un outil pour la délibération fiscale : l’impôt abc, with Gaël Giraud, Éric Levieil and Mathilde Salin, 2021.
More
Note de l'Institut Rousseau (policy paper). Presented at the Georgetown EJP Seminar (slides). Xerfi Canal interview.The Measure of Disorder: Population, State-Building and Rebellion in Old Regime France, master’s thesis, 2020. Slides. Supervisor: Thomas Piketty.