Michele Fabi, a postdoctoral fellow at CREST-École polytechnique has recently received the Award for the best paper presented at the International Fintech Research Conference, held at Parthenope University of Naples on 2-3 November 2023.
Michele Fabi
Michele Fabi is currently a post-doctoral researcher at CREST-Ecole polytechnique, serving as a member of the Blockchain and Platform Chair—a research initiative dedicated to blockchains and associated technologies.
Broadly speaking, Michele’s research fields are Financial Economics and Microeconomics, with a focus on topics such as fintech, platforms, decentralized and startup finance, blockchain, and the digitalization of money and markets. He is actively involved into a promoting research on these subjects by taking part in the organization of academic activities such as the BlockSem seminar and the Blockchain@X-OMI Workshop on Blockchain and Decentralized Finance.
Finally, Michele obtained his PhD in 2021 from the doctoral program IDEA-UAB (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona), working with Matthew Ellman as his advisor.
In 2023-2024, Michele is one of CREST’s International Job Market candidate.
2nd International Fintech Research Conference
The International Fintech Research Conference is set to be a vibrant hub for researchers, encouraging cross-disciplinary discussions and collaborations in the expansive field of Fintech. Covering diverse areas, the conference welcomes contributions in theoretical analysis, machine learning applications, cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity, neural networks, smart contracts, and more.
With a focus on cutting-edge topics such as blockchain technologies, big data analysis, and behavioral finance, the event promises to be a dynamic platform for researchers to share insights, engage in discussions, and shape the future of finance and technology.
During this conference, the Organizing Committee establishes a prize for the best paper presented which was awarded, this year, to Michele Fabi for his paper “Blockchain Design with Transmission Delays”.
More information on the Conference: https://www.disaq.uniparthenope.it/fintechlab/international-fintech-research-conference/
Blockchain Design with Transmission Delays
The article investigates the economics of blockchain design. Unlike previous studies, this research introduces a strategic variable for miners: the ability to choose the size of transaction blocks. This departure from the assumption of maximum block capacity provides insights applicable to modern blockchains like Ethereum.
The study makes two key contributions. Firstly, it establishes testable predictions on block size and justifies transaction fees from the perspective of consensus layer incentives. This differs from earlier approaches that focused on application layer incentives. Secondly, the research addresses the limitations of a partial-equilibrium approach found in previous market microstructure papers. By endogenizing token inflation, the model can provide insights into the optimal balance between transaction fees and token inflation.
The paper builds upon prior works in the economics literature on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, pioneered by Chiu and Koeppl (2019) and Pagnotta (2022) among others, incorporating elements of the new monetarist matching models like Choi and Rocheteau (2020). It is also deeply inspired by the computer science literature on blockchain consensus and distributed algorithms (e.g. Pass and Shi, 2017; Ren, 2019), which lays out the methodological and conceptual foundations for the study of miner incentives.
In conclusion, the article sheds light on the economic challenges of blockchain designs, providing valuable insights for both researchers and practitioners in the blockchain space.
To read the full paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VWGl65Mbg5iCSVNWnW3IMZZ1IL4oJuEU/view
18th IZ & 5th IZA/CREST Conference on Labor Market Policy Evaluation
Sara Signorelli, Laurent Davezies, Clemens Mueller, Pedro Vergara Merino, Alice Lapeyre, Bernhard Schmidpeter, Alice Zulkarnain, Nicholas Swanson, Weilon Zhang, Roland Rathelot, Isaiah Andrews, Arne Uhlendorff, Jeffrey Grogger, Xavier D’Haultfoeuille, Marco Caliendo
The 5th IZA/CREST conference on Evaluation of Labor Policies was held at ENSAE on October 19 and 20 2023. It brought together international experts in the fields of labor economics and econometrics. Each participant gave a 45 minute talk and the range of topics that were covered was broad, ranging from applied policy evaluations to econometric approaches to measure causal effects. The keynote was delivered by Isaiah Andrews on Causal Interpretation of Causal IV Estimands.
The program of the conference can be found here: https://conference.iza.org/conference_files/EVAL_2023/program
18th IZ & 5th IZA/CREST Conference on Labor Market Policy Evaluation
Sara Signorelli, Laurent Davezies, Clemens Mueller, Pedro Vergara Merino, Alice Lapeyre, Bernhard Schmidpeter, Alice Zulkarnain, Nicholas Swanson, Weilon Zhang, Roland Rathelot, Isaiah Andrews, Arne Uhlendorff, Jeffrey Grogger, Xavier D’Haultfoeuille, Marco Caliendo
The 5th IZA/CREST conference on Evaluation of Labor Policies was held at ENSAE on October 19 and 20 2023. It brought together international experts in the fields of labor economics and econometrics. Each participant gave a 45 minute talk and the range of topics that were covered was broad, ranging from applied policy evaluations to econometric approaches to measure causal effects. The keynote was delivered by Isaiah Andrews on Causal Interpretation of Causal IV Estimands.
The program of the conference can be found here: https://conference.iza.org/conference_files/EVAL_2023/program
Blockchain@X-OMI Workshop on Blockchain and Decentralized Finance
The Blockchain@X-OMI Workshop on Blockchain and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) was held on September 21-22 2023 at the Alan Turing building at INRIA on the École Polytechnique campus.
A gathering of multidisciplinary minds
The workshop brought together 22 scholars from a variety of backgrounds, such as economics, computer science, and mathematics, who presented their working papers. The academic presentations were complemented by three industrial talks delivered by blockchain innovators of the private sector.
The workshop highlighted the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to its central topic: As experts from various fields discussed similar issues but from different angles, the combination of their insights improved everyone’s understanding. From the talks of blockchain innovators such as Kamea Labs, StarkWare, and Giza, the workshop also made evident that blockchain and DeFi research has a large potential for experimentation in the private sector.
Towards a better understanding of blockchain and decentralized finance ecosystems
The presentations were sectioned into six sessions with strong interlinks to the central theme of blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi). On the first day, the workshop dived into topics concerning distributed consensus and the game theory of information aggregation in distributed systems. The successive session, on the financial analysis of Automated Market Makers (AMMs), received valuable discussions on how to employ stochastic optimal control tools to devise trading, liquidity provision, and risk prediction strategies in a Constant Product Market Maker (CPMM). The afternoon’s presentations shifted the focus towards the network security of DeFi protocols. Presenters identified existing attacks that weaken governance in DeFi ecosystems and devised machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions to mitigate them.
The second day started with an empirical network analysis of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols. One presenter graphically analysed DeFi marketplaces to explain trading behaviours. Another presenter with a Physics background assessed the health of these new markets using an interesting analogy the ideal thermal law. In the afternoon, the workshop delved into AMM design, featuring six papers that pointed out the exploitable vulnerabilities of AMMs to liquidity providers in the face of swap fees and adversarial liquidation. Some papers shed light on alternative trading protocols by introducing external pricing oracles, looking beyond the CFMM formula, and using batch trading. The topic shifted more to the AMM ecosystem improvements, mixed with also a historical look into the distributed system refinements that moulded blockchains today.
The first event co-organized by Blockchain@X Research Centre (École Polytechnique) and Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance (University of Oxford)
Blockchain@X Research Centre and Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance crossed paths in examining the financial market structure unprecedentedly facilitated by blockchain technologies. The Blockchain@X chair is directed by Professor Julien Prat (CNRS & CREST, École Polytechnique, IP Paris) and Professor Daniel Augot (Inria Saclay & École Polytechnique, IP Paris). The chair bridges economics and computer science to broadly identify challenges in the blockchain today. This diversity of its researchers’ expertise was reflected in the presentations given by the team, ranging from mechanism design and macro-foundations of utility tokens, to econometric and graph data-driven analysis of DeFi protocols.
Carrying a similar vision, at the Oxford-Man Institute (OMI), led by Professor Álvaro Cartea (University of Oxford), has the mission of addressing fundamental problems in quantitative finance. In particular, the participating speakers covered DeFi topics with a strong focus on the ecosystems of liquidity pools and financial decision-making in these new trading venues.
The Blockchain@X-OMI collaboration aimed at attracting academics and industrial partners to advance this emerging field of blockchain through research and application in Europe. Blockchain is a fast-evolving industry that has been absorbing endeavours from various studies that continuously inspect and propose implementations for improving performances. To synchronise the outputs from the university labs and the industry, this workshop served as an exchange channel to broadcast peoples’ work and incubate future collaborations.
CREST Conference on Risk & Insurance 14-15 sep 2023
The objective of the conference is to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers, and research scholars to present and exchange their research results on economic and financial decisions under risk, insurance markets and related public policies. It will be also a tribute to Professor Pierre Picard, an outstanding researcher of the field, who is Emeritus Professor at École polytechnique since September 2021.
This conference is organized as a workshop, based on plenary sessions held at ENSAE (Sep. 14) and Maison internationale (Cité internationale de Paris, Sep. 15), each presentation (12 in total) being made by a leading scientist. Presentations will represent the diversity of research on economic and financial decisions under risk, insurance markets and related public policies. All presentations will be made by invited speakers.
Date: September 14 and 15, 2023.
Participation to the conference is free, but registration is required. Please, click here to register.
Program of the conference
| Thursday, September 14 (ENSAE)- Amphi 200 | Friday, September 15 (Cité Internationale) - Salon Gulbenkian - Preyer | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:45am to 10:30am | Reception of the participants (coffee) | 9am | Reception of the participants (coffee) |
| 9:30am to 12:30pm | Morning session - Risk Theory | ||
| Rachel J. Huang (National Central University, Taiwan), A Simple Approach for Measuring Higher-Order Risk Attitudes | |||
| 10:30am to 12:30pm | Morning Session - Contract Theory | Arthur Snow (University of Georgia), A Complete Characterization of Downside Risk Preference | |
| Jean-Charles Rochet (Toulouse School of Economics), "Money and Taxes Implement Optimal Dynamic Mechanisms" | Richard Peter (University of Iowa), The many faces of multivariate risk-taking: Risk apportionment for desirable and undesirable attributes | ||
| François Salanié (INRAE & TSE), Competitive Nonlinear Pricing under Adverse Selection | |||
| 12:30pm to 1:30pm | Lunch | 12:30pm to 1:30pm | Lunch |
| 1:30pm to 3:30pm | Afternoon Session 1 - Public Policies | 1:30pm to 3:30pm | Afternoon Session 1 - Empirical Insurance |
| Enrico Biffis (Imperial College, London) , Short-lived gasses, carbon markets and climate risk mitigation | Georges Dionne (HEC Montreal), Consolidation of the US property and casualty insurance industry: Is climate risk a causal factor for mergers and acquisitions? | ||
| Christian Gollier (Toulouse School of Economics), Stress Discounting | Kili Wang (Tamkang University, Taiwan), Collusion between Retailers and Customers: The Case of Insurance Fraud in Taiwan | ||
| 3:30pm to 4pm | Coffee break | 3:30pm to 4pm | Coffee break |
| 4pm to 6pm | Afternoon Session 2 - Insurance | 4pm to 5pm | Afternoon Session 2 - Insurance |
| Pierre-Yves Geoffard (Paris School of Economics), Road traffic accidents in France: compensation for body injury in France | Michael Hoy (University of Guelph), New Safety Technologies and Vehicle Safety | ||
| Claude Fluet (Université Laval), Consumer Protection in Retail Investments: Are Market Adjusted Damages Efficient? | |||
PhD in economics: cohesion and multidisciplinarity
At the end of the year, the doctoral students in CREST’s economics cluster organized a series of seminars for first-year doctoral students.
Cohesion & multidisciplinarity
Cohesion between doctoral students is essential. It fosters collaboration, the exchange of ideas and mutual support, creating an environment conducive to learning. Peer solidarity allows to share experiences, solve problems in groups and develop crucial skills. By fostering a team spirit, the cohesion between doctoral students contributes to their personal development and success in their doctoral studies.
These seminars provide another opportunity for first-year doctoral students to present their research. They highlight the theme of their research, as well as the specific questions they are tackling, and the methodology envisaged throughout their doctorate.
CREST doctoral students and researchers are invited to take in these seminars, where their experience in presenting their research enables young doctoral students to practice presenting their project clearly and concisely to people outside the field, thus providing a fresh and stimulating perspective.
The sessions also facilitate the establishment of links with researchers working in similar fields, giving PhD students the opportunity to obtain advice based on the experience of these researchers.
By emphasizing multidisciplinary within the same cluster, these seminars encourage doctoral students to benefit from reflections from the literature and approaches from other fields of research within CREST. This approach stimulates multidisciplinary reflection, enriching the research work of each student.
List of presentations
| Camille Boissel | Heterogeneous responses to labour policy |
| Sébastien Cerles | A model of advertising |
| Aurélien Frot | Job search biases in the data |
| Gaëtan Menard | Productivity in health economics |
| Clément Montes | A model of economic sanctions |
| Théo Roudil-Valentin | Corporate taxation following shocks |
| Pedro Vergara Merino | Econometrics of randomized experiment: theory and simulation |
| Vincent Verger | Natural Language Processing applied to political economy |
| Yiyun Zheng | A model of platforms and reputation |
PhD in economics: cohesion and multidisciplinarity
At the end of the year, the doctoral students in CREST’s economics cluster organized a series of seminars for first-year doctoral students.
Cohesion & multidisciplinarity
Cohesion between doctoral students is essential. It fosters collaboration, the exchange of ideas and mutual support, creating an environment conducive to learning. Peer solidarity allows to share experiences, solve problems in groups and develop crucial skills. By fostering a team spirit, the cohesion between doctoral students contributes to their personal development and success in their doctoral studies.
These seminars provide another opportunity for first-year doctoral students to present their research. They highlight the theme of their research, as well as the specific questions they are tackling, and the methodology envisaged throughout their doctorate.
CREST doctoral students and researchers are invited to take in these seminars, where their experience in presenting their research enables young doctoral students to practice presenting their project clearly and concisely to people outside the field, thus providing a fresh and stimulating perspective.
The sessions also facilitate the establishment of links with researchers working in similar fields, giving PhD students the opportunity to obtain advice based on the experience of these researchers.
By emphasizing multidisciplinary within the same cluster, these seminars encourage doctoral students to benefit from reflections from the literature and approaches from other fields of research within CREST. This approach stimulates multidisciplinary reflection, enriching the research work of each student.
List of presentations
| Camille Boissel | Heterogeneous responses to labour policy |
| Sébastien Cerles | A model of advertising |
| Aurélien Frot | Job search biases in the data |
| Gaëtan Menard | Productivity in health economics |
| Clément Montes | A model of economic sanctions |
| Théo Roudil-Valentin | Corporate taxation following shocks |
| Pedro Vergara Merino | Econometrics of randomized experiment: theory and simulation |
| Vincent Verger | Natural Language Processing applied to political economy |
| Yiyun Zheng | A model of platforms and reputation |
CREST Conference on Risk & Insurance, 14-15 september 2023
The objective of the conference is to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers, and research scholars to present and exchange their research results on economic and financial decisions under risk, insurance markets and related public policies. It will be also a tribute to Professor Pierre Picard, an outstanding researcher of the field, who is Emeritus Professor at École polytechnique since September 2021.
This conference is organized as a workshop, based on plenary sessions held at ENSAE (Sep. 14) and Maison internationale (Cité internationale de Paris, Sep. 15), each presentation (12 in total) being made by a leading scientist. Presentations will represent the diversity of research on economic and financial decisions under risk, insurance markets and related public policies. All presentations will be made by invited speakers.
Date: September 14 and 15, 2023.
Participation to the conference is free, but registration is required. Please, click here to register.
Program of the conference
| Thursday, September 14 (ENSAE)- Amphi 200 | Friday, September 15 (Cité Internationale) - Salon Gulbenkian - Preyer | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:45am to 10:30am | Reception of the participants (coffee) | 9am | Reception of the participants (coffee) |
| 9:30am to 12:30pm | Morning session - Risk Theory | ||
| Rachel J. Huang (National Central University, Taiwan), A Simple Approach for Measuring Higher-Order Risk Attitudes | |||
| 10:30am to 12:30pm | Morning Session - Contract Theory | Arthur Snow (University of Georgia), A Complete Characterization of Downside Risk Preference | |
| Jean-Charles Rochet (Toulouse School of Economics), "Money and Taxes Implement Optimal Dynamic Mechanisms" | Richard Peter (University of Iowa), The many faces of multivariate risk-taking: Risk apportionment for desirable and undesirable attributes | ||
| François Salanié (INRAE & TSE), Competitive Nonlinear Pricing under Adverse Selection | |||
| 12:30pm to 1:30pm | Lunch | 12:30pm to 1:30pm | Lunch |
| 1:30pm to 3:30pm | Afternoon Session 1 - Public Policies | 1:30pm to 3:30pm | Afternoon Session 1 - Empirical Insurance |
| Enrico Biffis (Imperial College, London) , Short-lived gasses, carbon markets and climate risk mitigation | Georges Dionne (HEC Montreal), Consolidation of the US property and casualty insurance industry: Is climate risk a causal factor for mergers and acquisitions? | ||
| Christian Gollier (Toulouse School of Economics), Stress Discounting | Kili Wang (Tamkang University, Taiwan), Collusion between Retailers and Customers: The Case of Insurance Fraud in Taiwan | ||
| 3:30pm to 4pm | Coffee break | 3:30pm to 4pm | Coffee break |
| 4pm to 6pm | Afternoon Session 2 - Insurance | 4pm to 5pm | Afternoon Session 2 - Insurance |
| Pierre-Yves Geoffard (Paris School of Economics), Road traffic accidents in France: compensation for body injury in France | Michael Hoy (University of Guelph), New Safety Technologies and Vehicle Safety | ||
| Claude Fluet (Université Laval), Consumer Protection in Retail Investments: Are Market Adjusted Damages Efficient? | |||
IP Paris Nobel Lecture in Economics – Jan 16 2022, 12:15pm
The lecture will be given by Olivier Loisel, Julien Prat and Giovanni Ricco
The department of Economics of IP Paris is honoured to invite you to a Nobel Prize in Economics hybrid lecture, open to all, on the 16th of January 2023 from 12:15pm to 1:45pm to present the contributions of this year’s three recipients “for research on banks and financial crises”:
- Ben S. Bernanke
- Douglas W. Diamond
- Philip H. Dybvig
The lecture will be given by Olivier Loisel (CREST & ENSAE), Julien Prat (CREST-X) and Giovanni Ricco (soon CREST-X).
It will be accessible to a broad audience of researchers and students.
The lecture will be in a hybrid format from both Amphi 200 in the ENSAE building and online on Zoom.
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/92507835603?pwd=elRhNjMwbk1rMXRpZ0dEeTdzZXhmUT09
We are very much looking forward to seeing you!
PhD Day – Wednesday October 5th, 2022
The CREST is happy to announce that the 2022 PhD Day will take place on Wednesday October 5th at the Amphi 250.
The morning session will gather all faculties and PhD students with a welcome speech by the CREST’s direction and presentations of the new members’ research topics and interests. We warmly invite every faculty members to join this session!
A friendly lunch is planned to meet and chat with other participants.
The afternoon will be dedicated to PhD students: professors and administrative staff members will present various topics related to pursuing a PhD at CREST.
Detailed program of the day:
09:45 – Arrival, Amphi 250
10:00 – Morning session:
10:00 Welcome speech and presentation of the CREST (A. Dalayan, G. Hollard & T. Arrif)
10:30 Introduction of the new faculties and PhD students
12:00 Group picture
12:30 – Lunch, Grand Hall
14:00: Afternoon session:
14:00: Pursuing a PhD at CREST (T. Vergé)
14:20: Administrative support for research
14:30: Prevention at work (E. Taugourdeau)
14:45: PhD Student Representation and Rights (F. Cartellier)
15:00: Interdisciplinary seminar (M. Mugnier)
15:10: Teaching during the PhD
15:30: Tips for the PhD (A. Dalayan)
17:30 Closing Event, meeting point outside of the building
Please note that it is forbidden to eat or drink in the lecture hall.