Public Outreach

Wealthy ethnic minorities have a double advantage for autocracies: they are important for the economy and make perfect scapegoats for popular anger. This is a useful phenomenon for deflecting resentment against local authorities and delaying regime change.

Between age, social status, health, and education, we are not all equal when it comes to our income! However, even as equality becomes a major focus of study, most research concentrates on income disparities within homogeneous populations. In 2021, the economists Mathieu Faure and Nicolas Gravel developed a new way to measure inequality by looking at the differences between individuals. This small revolution can play a large role in the fight against the many faces of inequality.

Following the Covid-19 epidemic, the European economy has once more been shaken by the arrival of war in Ukraine. How can these ‘asymmetric’ shocks, affecting member states in different ways, be managed? Economists Gilles Dufrénot, Jean-Baptiste Gossé et Caroline Clerc argue the case for financial integration. Financial markets can reduce the adverse effects of financial crises by sharing the risk across European economies.

While the reform of pensions and the reform of the ecological transition are being approached by the French government as two distinct issues, they could be more linked than it might seem. Economists Armel Ngami and Thomas Seegmuller look at the effect of a pay-as-you-go pension system, taking into account the evolution of capital and pollution, as well as the effectiveness of health and environmental policies.

What do the Sahara Desert and Paris’ 16th arrondissement have in common? Both are located above a somewhat unusual water table: when you dig a hole in it, the water gushes out all on its own! The economists Hubert Stahn and Agnes Tomini examine this astonishing geological phenomenon in which the number of open wells does not impact the quantity of water in the water table, but rather the pressure that compresses its volume.

To what point does visiting a natural habitat modify the importance we give it? Does the value we give a place increase if, with each visit, we have a better academic and personal understanding of it? To respond to these questions, the researchers M. Maki Sy, H. Rey-Valette, C. Figuières, M. Simier, and R. de Wit examined the Palavas lagoons complex near Montpellier, France. The result of their study is undeniable: in most cases, an individual’s familiarity with a habitat changes his preferences. Scientific understanding also changes an individual’s preferences, but in a different way. Let’s discover how!

Social norms and interactions lie at the heart of our existence as humans, impacting all aspects of our lives. This makes made them a factor to be considered in many sciences. Yet, many economic models , trivialise them or even neglect them, in contrast to how the real world works. Therefore, three economists, Marc Fleurbaey, Ravi Kanbur, and Dennis Snower, are trying to change this perspective and bring the economy into a wider social game.

Finding the right treatment for each patient is the very foundation of Healthcare. If we push this principle to the extreme, precision medicine is one of the best ways to fight cancer.

In the fight against crime, private and public actors in security and protection work hand in hand. What good would a security camera do if it were not connected to a local police station? Are the police more useful to people who have cameras? The researchers Tanguy van Ypersele, Steeve Mongrain, Joanne Roberts, and Ross Hickey came up with a model that analyzes the link between public and private security.

Why did medieval inheritance rules prioritize men over women? Èric Roca Fernández uses a mathematical simulation to demonstrate how the systematic preference for men in inheritance rules helped European feudal fiefdoms transform into modern states.