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Research

Working Papers

Big Push Policies and Network Externalities: Insights from Quebec's EV Fast-Charging Market,
Cordeau, Hugo. 2025

Industries with network externalities and strong complementarities may exhibit multiple equilibria. I examine whether direct government provision of network infrastructure — a Big Push — can remedy this inefficiency. Using EV registration and charging transaction data from 2017–2023, I build a structural model of vehicle demand and charging behavior, in which consumers choose an EV model and derive utility from performing trip, which is function of the charging network quality. I decompose the Big Push into two components: a coordination effect and an externality effect. I find that the coordination effect — shifting the economy from the low-adoption to the high-adoption state — increases EV adoption by 140%, while the externality effect raises adoption by an additional 50%. The latter arises from the placement of chargers at critical connector nodes that would otherwise be unprofitable. As the network grows from about 300 to 1,000 stations, government provision crowds in private investment in the network core while crowding out investment at the periphery. Overall, the policy is highly effective, generating $11 billion in consumer value and $2,7 billion in climate benefits from a $185 million investment. This paper provides the first empirical evidence that direct public provision of network infrastructure can resolve coordination failures.

Leveraging the roll-out of Montréal’s protected Express Biking Network and bikeshare data, I estimate that new lanes increase ridership by about 30 percent within 300 meters, declining to about 20 percent within 500 meters. This effect is driven by higher speeds and longer trips. Nearby lanes experience positive spillovers, suggesting new cyclists rather than displacement. A triple-differences strategy using seasonal variation finds little to no substitution away from the subway network, while descriptive evidence points to a reduction in car use.

The Impact of Violent Crimes on Commuting: Evidence from Toronto, with William Arbour. 2025

TBD

Publication

The Economic Effects of Long-Term Climate Change: Evidence from the Little Ice Age: Replication, (with Nikolai Cook, Tongzhe Li, Taylor Wright), Accepted, Economic Inquiry, 2025

Waldinger (2022) finds a positive relationship between temperature and city size during the climate change of 1600-1850. We show the main result differs by city size. Cities with less than 1000 inhabitants (which make up 23.5% of observations and are 49.6% of cities at some point) exhibit a strong and positive relationship between temperature and city size, whereas cities with always more than 1000 inhabitants exhibit a negative relationship. Further examination of the underlying city size data, which bins populations into coarse thousand-wide population intervals, finds the original analysis to be robust to a number of reasonable alternative researcher choices.

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