Public Outreach

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to have a baby. In France, one in every eight couples seeks help for a fertility problem. Solutions such as medically assisted reproduction (MAR) do exist, but these treatments can be costly for both individuals and society. Faced with this phenomenon, economists Johanna Etner, Natacha Raffin, and Thomas Seegmuller have sought the best system to reduce the inequalities generated by infertility, which affects individuals in an increasingly random manner.

Only in French | On Tuesday 16 November, Agnès Tomini (AMSE / CNRS) gave a Sciences Echos conference on the "Rush for natural resources".

For the most impoverished, the various obstacles and pitfalls along the path to school do not always make it a walk in the park. To fight against poverty, many microcredit programs have been set up. One of these, the “Self Help Group” in the state of Jharkhand, India, has been studied by economists Jean-Marie Baland, Timothée Demont, and Rohini Somanathan. After six years of operation, the program has increased school enrollment by 40%. However, it remains ineffective in reducing child labor. These results can further help us understand how microcredit works.

Only in French | Video conference by Justin Leroux (HEC Montréal / AMSE) who offers an introduction to environmental economics as part of the Sciences Echos cycle.

Qualifications are not everything in the job market. Knowing how to be patient, work in a team, and manage your emotions are all highly valued skills. These so-called non-cognitive or social-emotional skills are developed during a key period in our life: childhood. Economists Simon Briole, Hélène Le Forner, and Anthony Lepinteur reveal in a recent study how sibling size influences the development of social-emotional skills and has the dependent variable of gender.

When you step into a voting booth, you are faced with a choice: who do you vote for? What happens to people who share the ideas of several parties at once? How can these people influence elections? These are the questions that Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde and João V. Ferreira answer in an article that examines how individuals divided between several ideologies can impact elections.

Should we wish for the best or focus on damage control? From deciding who will sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, to choosing a cake for guests, or distributing a budget, the question is always there. Anna Bogomolnaia, Ron Holzman, and Hervé Moulin look at the mechanisms of decision-making and come up with ways to increase the guarantee that the worst will not happen.

Bruno Ventelou (AMSE/CNRS), a health economist, talks about his research.

Only in French | Video conference by Charles Figuières (AMSE, Aix Marseille University, FEG) who offers an introduction to behavioural economics as part of the Sciences Echos cycle.

Fuel prices are almost constantly changing, whilst prices paid for electrical appliances may remain stable for several months. For most products, prices tend to remain the same over weeks or even months. There is a simple explanation for this: it would be too expensive for companies to perpetually analyse market price changes. This is the conclusion reached by economists Mark N. Harris, Hervé Le Bihan and Patrick Sevestre after analysing the evolution of prices of several hundred industrial product pricess.