Gilles Duranton is professor of real estate and holds the Dean’s Chair in Real Estate. He joined Wharton in 2012 after holding academic positions at the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics. A graduate from HEC Paris and Sorbonne University, he obtained his PhD in economics from the London School of Economics and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

His current work focuses land use and urban growth in emerging cities, the measurement of urban transportation and congestion, land development and land use over the long run, technology in real estate, and the geography of innovation and technology. He is also interested in the evaluation of the effects of infrastructure and place-based policies.

He serves as a co-editor for the Journal of Urban Economics and sits on the editorial board of several other academic journals. He is a fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. He regularly works as consultant on regional and urban policy for national governments and international organisations. He was also the 2011 president of the North American Regional Science Association, the 2016-2017 president of the Urban Economics Association, and the 2013-2019 the chair of the Wharton Real Estate Department. Recent publications include:

- Urban Growth and its aggregate implications (with Diego Puga).
Econometrica 2023
- Mobility and congestion in urban India (with Prottoy Akbar, Victor Couture, and Adam Storeygard). American Economic Review 2023
- The production function for housing: Evidence from France (with Pierre-Philippe Combes and Laurent Gobillon). Journal of Political Economy 2021.
- The economics of urban density (with Diego Puga). Journal of Economic Perspectives 2020.
- The costs of agglomeration: House and land prices in French Cities (with Pierre-Philippe Combes and Laurent Gobillon). Review of Economic Studies 2019.