Research

Working Papers

• The Informality Trade-Off: Wages and Rural-Urban Migration in South Africa
  • Presented at the CSAE 2025 conference, the AASLE 2024 conference, the 17th AFD-World Bank International Conference on Migration and Development, and the 13th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association
• Assessing Urban Policies Using a Simulation Model with Formal and Informal Housing (joint with Paolo Avner, Basile Pfeiffer, Claus Rabe, Harris Selod, and Vincent Viguié)
  • Revision requested at the Journal of Urban Economics
• Can the Urban Poor Avoid Flood Risks? The Case of Cape Town, South Africa (joint with Paolo Avner, Charlotte Liotta, Basile Pfeiffer, Claus Rabe, Harris Selod, and Vincent Viguié)
  • Online documentation developed for the City of Cape Town (within the South African Cities Support Programme) as a paper companion

Work in Progress

• A project on why regularized migrants do not formalize at the same rate as native workers (with Lukas Delgado-Prieto)
• A project on why urban dwellers do not move much following a change in job location (with David Gomtsyan)
• A project on which spatial spillover estimates to use for the evaluation of place-based policies