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March 8: Celebrating the Work of Women Researchers an PhD students at CREST
INTERNATIONAL_WOMEN_DAY_2026

From climate economics to machine learning and public policy, women researchers and PhD students at CREST contribute every day to advancing knowledge and addressing major societal challenges.

Every year on March 8, International Women’s Rights Day highlights the achievements of women across society and offers an opportunity to reflect on progress toward gender equality. In academia, women researchers play a crucial role in advancing knowledge, even though they remain underrepresented in several disciplines and at senior levels.

At CREST, women researchers and PhD students contribute actively to research in economics, sociology, finance and statistics. Through their work, they help strengthen the laboratory’s international visibility while addressing some of the major economic and social challenges of our time.

Research shedding light on societal transformations

Many women researchers at CREST conduct research that directly informs debates on public policy and social change.

For example, Marion Leroutier has studied differences in carbon footprints between men and women. Her research shows that women emit on average around 26% less CO₂ than men, a gap largely explained by differences in consumption patterns, particularly in transportation and food. This work contributes to discussions on environmental policy and highlights how gendered behaviors can influence the distributional effects of climate policies.

Research conducted at CREST also addresses broader demographic and economic transformations. Studies on the decline in fertility in France and other developed countries, by Pauline Rossi in her recent book, examine the economic and social implications of demographic change, a topic that has become increasingly central to public debate.

Recognition of women researchers at CREST

The work of women researchers at CREST is regularly recognized by the international academic community.

In 2026, Yuki Tamura received the Young Female Researchers Award from the Japanese Economic Association, highlighting the growing international visibility of her research.

In statistics and machine learning, Anna Korba was awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant for her project OptInfinite, which aims to develop new optimization and machine learning methods in infinite-dimensional settings.

These distinctions illustrate the diversity and excellence of research conducted by women scientists at CREST across multiple disciplines.

Women contributing to economic policy and public debate

Women researchers at CREST are also actively involved in shaping economic debate and public policy.

For instance, Emmanuelle Taugourdeau and Pauline Rossi were recently appointed members of the Conseil d’analyse économique, an advisory body that provides economic expertise to the French government. Their work contributes to bringing rigorous economic analysis into policy discussions.

CREST researchers also regularly participate in public debates through media appearances and collaborations with institutions, helping to disseminate research findings beyond academia.

The role of doctoral researchers

Doctoral students are another essential component of the laboratory’s research ecosystem. Many PhD students at CREST contribute to innovative research projects in areas such as labor markets, inequality, discrimination, data science and financial economics.

In the 2025-2026 cohort, nearly half of the newly recruited PhD students are women (12 women and 15 men), reflecting CREST’s ability to attract talented young female researchers. This dynamic is an important aspect of the laboratory’s commitment to promoting diversity in academic careers, not only at the doctoral level but throughout all stages of recruitment.

Looking ahead

International Women’s Rights Day is both a moment to celebrate achievements and a reminder of the importance of continuing to promote diversity in research.

At CREST, the work of women researchers and doctoral students contributes every day to advancing knowledge and to improving our understanding of economic and social transformations.

On this March 8, we celebrate their contributions to the laboratory’s scientific life and to the broader academic community.

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Scientific excellence depends on the diversity of perspectives within the research community. Supporting the careers of women researchers and doctoral students is therefore not only a matter of equality, but also a key condition for the vitality and impact of research. At CREST, we are committed to fostering an academic environment where talent can thrive at every stage of the scientific career.

Find more highlights by women at CREST:

Yuki Tamura wins the 2026 Young Female Researcher Award from the Japanese Economic Association

In 2026, the Japanese Economic Association (JEA), awarded Yuki Tamura (CREST-École polytechnique) the JEA Award for Young Female Researchers sponsored by the Nippon Life Insurance Company.

 

Since 2024, Yuki Tamura is an Assistant Professor in Economics at CREST-École polytechnique. She obtained her PhD from the University of Rochester in 2021. Prior to her position at CREST, Yuki Tamura was a post-doctoral associate at NYU Abu Dhabi. Her research lies at the intersection of market design, social choice, game theory, and political economy. Her work focuses on resource allocation and reallocation problems under various preference structures, developing normative and strategic mechanisms that balance fairness and efficiency in assignments. In addition, her research extends to political economy and voting models, analyzing strategic behavior, polarization, and electoral competition. Overall, her work advances mechanism design theory by clarifying how institutional rules shape outcomes in matching, redistribution, and collective decision-making contexts.

 

The Japanese Economic Association (JEA) is the main professional organization for economists in Japan and brings together researchers working across all areas of economics, from theory to applied and empirical work. It provides an important platform for the presentation and discussion of new research, notably through its biannual conferences, which attract both Japanese and international scholars. The association also publishes the Japanese Economic Review, an internationally recognized academic journal. Through its conferences, publications, and academic network, the JEA plays a central role in supporting economic research and fostering collaboration within Japan and beyond.

 

Since 2020, the Japanese Economic Association established the JEA Award for Young Female Researchers sponsored by the Nippon Life Insurance Company to support young female researchers who are expected to become role models for the next generation. Each year, the prize is awarded to female researchers with outstanding research achievements within ten years of receiving their final degrees. In 2026, the award was conferred to Yuki Tamura for her significant contributions to the matching theory in the context of the exchange of indivisible goods. Yuki Tamura realized detailed theoretical analyses and characterizations of the Top Trading Cycle mechanism and its alternatives.

 

Find out more about the Japanese Economic Association.

Read the JEA communication about the 2026 award.

Intelligence artificielle et marché du travail : l’éclairage de Roland Rathelot lors d’un MeetUp Hi!PARIS
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Lors du MeetUp organisé par Hi!Paris à Station F, Roland Rathelot, chercheur au CREST, professeur d’économie à l’ENSAE Paris et chercheur affilié à Hi!Paris, est intervenu pour présenter ses travaux sur l’impact de l’intelligence artificielle sur le fonctionnement du marché du travail. 

Son intervention s’inscrivait dans une conférence intitulée “How is artificial intelligence transforming work, employment, skills, and productivity?”, réunissant chercheurs et acteurs économiques autour d’une question centrale : que change réellement l’IA, aujourd’hui, dans l’emploi et l’organisation du travail ?

Comprendre ce que l’IA fait concrètement au marché du travail

Plutôt que de se concentrer sur les discours prospectifs ou les scénarios de substitution massive du travail humain, Roland Rathelot a proposé une approche ancrée dans les données et l’analyse empirique. Ses travaux s’intéressent en particulier aux frictions informationnelles sur le marché du travail : ce qui empêche les entreprises et les travailleurs de se rencontrer efficacement, malgré l’abondance d’offres, de candidatures et d’informations disponibles.

Dans ce cadre, l’intelligence artificielle apparaît moins comme un facteur de destruction d’emplois que comme un outil susceptible d’améliorer la mise en relation entre l’offre et la demande de travail. En exploitant de très larges bases de données et des algorithmes de recommandation, ses recherches analysent dans quelle mesure l’IA peut aider à mieux orienter les candidats vers des postes correspondant réellement à leurs compétences, et inversement.

Le projet ERC INASHI comme fil conducteur

Cette intervention faisait directement écho au projet ERC INASHI, porté par Roland Rathelot, qui étudie les effets des innovations technologiques sur le marché du travail à partir de données massives et d’analyses rigoureuses. L’objectif est de mesurer précisément comment les outils numériques, et en particulier les systèmes de recommandation, modifient les comportements de recherche d’emploi, les décisions de recrutement et, à plus long terme, l’allocation du travail et la productivité.

En s’appuyant sur des résultats empiriques, ses travaux permettent de dépasser les oppositions entre “IA créatrice” ou “IA destructrice” d’emplois, pour mettre en lumière des mécanismes plus fins : réduction de certaines frictions, mais aussi risques de nouveaux biais ou d’effets d’exclusion si ces outils sont mal conçus ou mal utilisés.

Une contribution au débat public sur l’IA et l’emploi

Dans un contexte de transformations rapides liées à l’IA, l’intervention de Roland Rathelot a contribué à recentrer le débat sur des enjeux mesurables et observables, utiles tant pour les chercheurs que pour les décideurs publics et les acteurs économiques. Elle a également nourri les échanges avec d’autres intervenants issus du monde académique et de l’entreprise, autour des effets de l’IA sur la productivité, les compétences et les pratiques managériales.

L’intervention de Roland Rathelot est disponible en ligne :

Econ Nobel Prize Lecture: Philippe Aghion at CREST and Institut Polytechnique de Paris

On January 12, 2026, CREST and the Department of Economics of Institut Polytechnique de Paris welcomed a large audience for its annual lecture devoted to the Nobel Prize in Economics, hosted at CREST-ENSAE Paris.

The event featured Philippe Aghion, one of the recipients of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, together with Antonin Bergeaud, winner of the 2025 Best Young Economist Prize.

Bertrand Garbinti (organizer), Thierry Coulhon (head of IP Paris), Antonin Bergeaud, Emmanuelle Taugourdeau (head of CREST), Philippe Aghion, Elise Coudin (head of ENSAE Paris)

The lecture opened with remarks by Antonin Bergeaud, who offered a personal and insightful introduction to Philippe Aghion’s work. Using the language of Schumpeterian growth, he highlighted the breadth of Aghion’s research agenda and the remarkable influence it has had across fields, institutions, and generations of economists.

Philippe Aghion then took the floor for his lecture, The Economics of Creative Destruction. Returning to the foundations of the Aghion-Howitt model, he explained how long-run growth emerges from a steady process of innovation, in which new ideas and technologies continuously replace older ones. This framework, he argued, remains a powerful tool for understanding some of today’s most pressing economic questions.

Throughout the lecture, Aghion illustrated how the concept of creative destruction helps make sense of historical and contemporary challenges, from industrial take-off to periods of slow growth, as well as the difficulties faced by middle-income countries. A recurring theme was the role of competition: not only as a driver of innovation, but also as a condition for the diffusion of new technologies and the renewal of economic activity.

The discussion also addressed the tensions between innovation, market concentration, and inequality. Philippe Aghion stressed that innovation-led growth does not have to come at the expense of social cohesion, provided that the right policy framework is in place. In this respect, he argued that elements of the American and European models can be combined, rather than opposed, notably through education, labor market institutions, and competition policy.

In the final part of the lecture, Philippe Aghion turned to the economic implications of artificial intelligence. While acknoledging its considerable potential for productivity gains and new forms of job creation, he also emphasized the importance of competition and skills in ensuring that these benefits are broadly shared.

Conference replay

The full lecture is now available on the CREST YouTube channel.

DeFi Workshop 2025

On 15-16 December 2025, CREST-Institut Polytechnique de Paris and Grenoble INP jointly hosted the DeFi Workshop 2025 in Grenoble, France.

The workshop brought together researchers working on the economics, infrastructure, and design of blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi).

The event was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) through its grant for the project Blockchain and Decentralized Finance (BLOCKFI).

Day 1: Markets, Incentives, and Protocol Design

The first day featured a series of talks on blockchain microstructure, market design, incentives, and governance. Paolo Guasoni (Dublin City University) analyzed the dynamics of Bitcoin mempool, finding key determinants of fees and waiting times during congestion. Nir Chemaya (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) introduced Clever Look-ahead Volatility Reduction (CLVR), a transaction ordering rule for AMM-based exchanges, designed to reduce intra-block price volatility and improve execution outcomes.

Several presentations focused on staking and incentives. Fayçal Drissi (University of Oxford) discussed the macroeconomic implications of liquid staking, while Boyang Mu (IP Paris) presented a microeconomic model showing how reputation mechanisms can discipline operators in delegated staking and restaking protocols.

Market performance and mechanism design were explored by Lorenzo Schoenleber (Collegio Carlo Alberto), who provided evidence of systemic frictions in prediction markets. Michele Fabi (IP Paris) studied automated market-making mechanisms for peer-to-peer energy sharing, demonstrating substantial gains over grid-only benchmarks.

Julian Ma (Ethereum Foundation) discussed proposed improvements to Ethereum’s transaction sequencing and inclusion mechanisms (EIP-7805) aimed at improving user experience and limiting transaction reordering manipulation.

The day was concluded by three presentations: Mnacho Echenim (Grenoble INP) presented work on formally verifying optimal trade splitting across concentrated liquidity pools using Isabelle/HOL. Aklis Georgiadis-Harris (University of Warwick) challenged the view of banks as inherently fragile through a mechanism-design framework yielding efficient equilibria without bank runs. Yiyun Zheng (IP Paris) presented her analysis of how airdrop design shapes platform growth and governance.

Day 2: Risk, Scaling; and Network Perspectives

The second day opened with Maarten van Oordt (Vrije University Amsterdam), who examined rational cryptocurrency bubbles driven by expected investment inflows. Following this, Louis Latournerie (IP Paris) presented his mathematical model of the Aave lending protocol, which incorporates liquidation strategies to quantify protocol-level risk.

Roman Kozhan (Warwick Business School) showed that informed liquidity provision on decentralized exchanges, particularly near-current-price activity in low-fee pools, plays a significant role in price discovery. Further insights were provided by Emmanuel Gobet (Sorbonne University), who demonstrated in an optimal stopping model for Uniswap v3 that liquidity providers should optimally concentrate liquidity in a single range.

Daniel Augot (Inria, IP Paris) explained the cryptographic foundations of zero-knowledge proofs to enhance Ethereum’s scalability, highlighting STARK-based proof systems. Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou (Panthéon-Assas University) highlighted persistent censorship risks in Proof-of-Stake systems due to weak validator incentives for enforcing fair transaction ordering.

The workshop concluded with two talks on applying network analysis to assess decentralized ecosystems. Natkamon Tovanich (TU Wien) presented network-based frameworks for uncovering money flows, user behaviors, and economic activities on blockchains. Emphasizing the importance of real-time DeFi monitoring and risk analysis, Julien Prat (IP Paris) demonstrated that network topology plays a crucial role in contagion within the DeFi lending protocol.

The DeFi Workshop 2025 showcased the breadth and depth of current research in blockchain and decentralized ecosystems, fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue and setting the stage for future collaborations across economics, computer science, and cryptography.

Le déclin démographique en France : une urgence économique et sociale

2025 : le solde naturel de la France devient négatif pour la première fois depuis 1945

Selon les chiffres de l’Insee publiés le 13 janvier 2026, 2025 marque une rupture historique : pour la première fois depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le solde naturel de la France est négatif. L’année dernière, le pays a enregistré plus de décès (651 000) que de naissances (645 000), soit un solde de -6 000. Parallèlement, l’indicateur conjoncturel de fécondité (ICF) atteint un niveau historiquement bas, avec 1,56 enfant par femme, le plus faible depuis 1917.

Faut-il s’en inquiéter ? Dans son livre Le déclin démographique : une urgence économique (PUF, 2026), Pauline Rossi, économiste, chercheuse au CREST et Professeure à l’École polytechnique, propose une analyse approfondie des origines et des conséquences de ce phénomène. Ses travaux, menés au sein du CREST, montrent que la baisse de la natalité et le vieillissement de la population s’inscrivent dans un mouvement global vers plus de prospérité économique et de liberté individuelle. Comme les transitions énergétiques et technologiques, la transition démographique exige de repenser notre organisation économique et sociale pour garantir un progrès plus durable et inclusif.

Un phénomène mondial et structurel

Le déclin démographique n’est pas spécifique à la France. Comme le souligne Pauline Rossi, il s’agit d’un phénomène mondial, comparable par son ampleur et ses défis à la transition climatique. Dans le cadre de son projet ERC P3OPLE (Peers and Possible Partners: exploring the Origins of Population Long-term Equilibria), elle étudie notamment comment les politiques publiques peuvent influencer les dynamiques démographiques et réduire les inégalités, en particulier celles liées à la parentalité et à la conciliation entre vie professionnelle et vie familiale.

Ses recherches montrent que les politiques natalistes traditionnelles ont souvent des effets limités. Elle plaide pour une reconnaissance du travail parental comme un investissement collectif, et pour une refonte des politiques publiques afin de mieux soutenir les familles et favoriser l’égalité entre les sexes.

Quelles conséquences pour l’économie et la société ?

Le vieillissement de la population et la baisse de la natalité posent des défis majeurs : financement des retraites, pression sur les systèmes de santé, pénurie de main-d’oeuvre dans certains secteurs, et adaptation des infrastructures. La France, avec une espérance de vie parmi les plus élevées d’Europe, doit anticiper ces transformations pour en faire une opportunité de développement durable et inclusif.

Pauline Rossi insiste sur la nécessité d’une transition démographique maîtrisée, qui passe par l’innovation sociale, la valorisation du capital humain et une meilleure répartition des ressources. Ses travaux dans le cadre de son ERC P3OPLE visent à identifier les leviers politiques les plus efficaces pour accompagner cette transition, en s’appuyant sur des données rigoureuses et des analyses comparatives internationales.

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