Milan Quentel

Next presentations: CEMFI (April 29), University of Vienna (May 12), University of Potsdam (June 16), Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (June 18)

Working Papers

Renewable Energy Infrastructure, Welfare, and Redistribution [Paper] [March 2026]

Selected for the REStud North America Tour 2024, Best Student Paper Prize at the 13th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association

Abstract:  Renewable energy has vast potential, yet adoption remains slow as residents oppose construction. I leverage technology-induced changes in wind energy suitability, data at 1-by-1 km resolution, and a quantitative spatial model to estimate preferences against wind turbines in Germany. Emissions abatement implies large benefits from wind energy, but the incentives for host communities remain mixed. As generation costs continue to fall, slow and costly development threatens to forfeit annual welfare gains of $32.1 billion by 2045. As an alternative, I propose a set of turbine locations and transfers that halves welfare costs and makes development incentive-compatible.

Work-in-Progress

Spies (with Albrecht Glitz and Sekou Keita)

Abstract: Espionage incurs important costs yet there is little quantitative evidence on how secret services and spies work, and under what conditions they perform well. We study this question by exploiting declassified archival data from one of the most prolific secret services worldwide, the East German Stasi during the Cold War. We build our analysis on a unique database that contains information on all the pieces of information that informants in the West sent to East Germany between 1970 and 1989. We match a subset of spies to their West German social security records, allowing us to simultaneously track their careers in the secret service and in the firms they were spying on. Analyzing the quantity and quality of information delivered, we disentangle the roles that spy heterogeneity, learning-by-doing, and career progression in the espionage object play for spy performance. Finally, we discuss the implications for counter-espionage efforts today. 

Does Eating Local Reduce Emissions? (with Levi Crews, Ishan Nath, Peter O'Brien and James Sayre)

Spousal Moves, Spatial Misallocation, and the Gender Wage Gap (with Nina Gläser and Joan Monras)