Pauline Rossi and Pierre Boyer nominees of the Best Young Economist of France Award
Both professors at the Department of Economics of the École Polytechnique and researchers at the Centre for Research in Economics and Statistics (CREST*) at Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Pauline Rossi and Pierre Boyer are among the nominees for the Best Young Economist Award 2023. Mathieu Reynaert, professor and researcher at the Toulouse School of Economics is the third nominee. Julia Cagé, professor at Science Po Paris and Vincent Pons, professor at Harvard Business School, are the two winners ex aequo. These awards recognise not only the quality of academic work, but also the ability to explore and provide solutions to important social issues.
Pauline Rossi: Economics and Demography
Fertility remains high in Sub-Saharan Africa, two to three children higher than in the rest of the world. Policies put in place to accelerate the demographic transition have not yet produced results. They assume that the high fertility rate is mainly due to women's lack of control over their pregnancies. Pauline Rossi's research, at the interface between applied microeconomics, development economics and family economics, shows that this is not the case. This is because couples, and especially women, have good reasons to want many children: their economic future depends on it. To be effective, population policies must act on these economic incentives. The researcher's activities combine economic modelling and fieldwork, in addition to expert work in various developing countries. She has just received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council for the P3OPLE project (Peers and Possible Partners: Exploring the Origins of Population Long-term Equilibria) on these issues.
Pierre Boyer and economic policy reforms
Pierre Boyer's research focuses on the implications of political competition on the priorities of public policies and regulatory frameworks. For example, he has studied the factors that determine the acceptance of paying taxes. This work, which is still ongoing, finds that the most important factor in the willingness to pay taxes is the feeling that public money is well used. Another of the questions that has motivated his research is to understand how the major tax reforms carried out in the 1980s and 1990s in Europe and the United States could be politically accepted by the population when they favoured high-income individuals. The researcher is also interested in the efficiency of economic measures. For example, he has shown that, under certain conditions, the activity allowance brings in more money than it costs the community. Winner of the 2017 Malinvaud Prize for the best article by a young economist, Pierre Boyer is also a member of the Conseil des prélèvements obligatoires at the Cour des Comptes.
About the Best Young Economist Award
Created in 2000 by the think tank "Le Cercle des économistes" and the newspaper "Le Monde", this prize is a reference award for young French economists. It recognises the work of a French economist or an economist working in France who is less than 41 years old. Because the role of economists goes beyond research laboratories and consultancies, it recognises not only the excellence of the academic production of young economists, but also their contribution to public debate.