Essays in Urban and Political Economics
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rollet-vrollet-phd-economics-2026-thesis.pdf
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2.79 MB
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Author(s)
Rollet, Vincent
Advisor(s)
Donaldson, Dave
Atkin, David
Date Issued
May 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This dissertation consists of three essays in urban and political economics. The first studies how cities grow through redevelopment—demolishing old buildings to make way for new ones—and how this process is influenced by zoning, which regulates the size and uses of new buildings. Using New York City as a case study, I build the first parcel-level panel of a city’s buildings, zoning, and floorspace prices. This data allows me to estimate a dynamic spatial equilibrium model of floorspace supply and demand, validate the model using quasi-experimental variation from recent zoning reforms, and apply it to evaluate the effects of relaxing regulation on construction and affordability. While zoning strongly constrains city growth, the effects of relaxing regulation take decades to materialize and are limited in inexpensive or densely built areas. Large fixed costs of redevelopment, which rise sharply with the size of existing buildings, generate considerable persistence in city structure and substantially lower the expected gains from relaxing zoning. Furthermore, due to migration, the affordability benefits of zoning reform largely accrue to households outside the rezoned neighborhoods. The second essay, coauthored with Benjamin Marx and Vincent Pons, studies electoral turnovers in national elections. In most national elections, voters face a key choice between continuity and change: electoral turnovers occur when the incumbent candidate or party fails to win reelection. To understand how turnovers affect national outcomes, we study presidential and parliamentary elections held globally between 1946 and 2018. We document the prevalence of turnovers over time and estimate their effects on economic performance, human development, and the quality of democracy. Using a close-elections regression discontinuity design across countries, we show that turnovers improve several measures of country performance. To explain these positive effects, we explore how electoral turnovers affect leader characteristics, shape policy decisions, reduce perceived corruption, and foster accountability. The third essay, coauthored with Raphaël Descamps, Benjamin Marx, and Vincent Pons, explores the global incumbency advantage. We first show that existing subnational estimates of the incumbency advantage correlate positively with GDP per capita and democratic quality, and negatively with corruption across countries. Building on this meta-analysis, we then consider presidential and parliamentary elections held since 1945 to estimate how a national electoral victory affects the probability that winning parties and candidates retain power beyond the term for which they were elected. On average, national election winners benefit from an incumbency advantage, but this effect is short-lived and differs markedly across contexts: it is large in Africa, North America, and Western Europe, but muted or even reversed in Latin America and in Asia and Oceania. We explore how standard incumbency effects and electoral manipulation contribute to these results. In established democracies, the national incumbency advantage reflects gains in the subsequent electoral performance of election winners. In less democratic regimes, it mainly stems from manipulation of the fairness and timing of elections.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
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