Due to the information asymmetry between patients and physicians, prescribing decisions are made by physicians. To promote their drugs, pharmaceutical companies spend considerable amounts to physicians, either by funding their attendance to conferences, or through donations and gifts. The relationships between healthcare professionals and the pharmaceutical industry, and the influence of promotion on doctors' prescribing behavior, is therefore a major issue for the regulation of healthcare spending and the sustainability of our healthcare system. Indeed, laboratory promotion can be beneficial if it provides information to physicians, which then leads them to prescribe treatments associated with better health outcomes. But it can be costly and inefficient if these prescriptions only result from the moral contract which binds doctors to firms and leads them to prescribe treatments which are less effective and / or more costly. This project aims to analyze the role of the relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and doctors on the prescription behavior of the latter. We mobilize a wide range of microeconomic analysis tools (microeconomic theory, mobilization of large administrative databases, laboratory testing and experimentation) in order to assess the impact of drug promotion on doctors' prescribing behaviors. in France. The project will answer to two important questions. First, we will analyze if physicians prescribe more drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies with which they have financial relations. We will also test whether this leads them to more expensive and/or less effective prescriptions than they would do without any financial relations. To answer these questions, we will use administrative, longitudinal and exhaustive data on physicians in France. More precisely, we will merge data from the “Transparence Santé” database to those of the national health insurance. Then, a testing with doctors will be implemented; this is the only possible way to analyze if these financial relations lead to less efficient prescriptions. In our second research question, we will analyze whether prescriptions result from better drug knowledge due to information provided by the pharmaceutical industry, or if they are motivated by financial incentives instead. We will develop a theoretical model whose predictions will be tested thanks to a lab experiment. This entire project will be carried out with a team with varied and complementary skills in microeconomics, as well as with public health doctors and a psychologist.

The purpose of this interdisciplinary project is to study the socio-demographic, economic, and political consequences of the World War II in France. To this end, we will use historical quantitative data, and methods from both political science and economics. Distinguishing short-term and long-term impacts, we focus on three dimensions of the World War II: a foreign occupation and internal violence, an international war of liberation, and, finally, elites’ behaviors and institutions changes. According to the literature studying conflict in other context, conflicts impact economic and human capital, social capital, trust in institution and interpersonal trust, legitimacy of politicians and elite, and gender inequalities. To empirically study these potential impacts in France after World War II, we exploit various sources of data, and we plan to collect data dealing with the intensity and the spatial disparity of the various dimensions of the War in France and relate them to various post-war measures. In addition to previous monographic and qualitative studies, the project will broaden our knowledge of the effects of World War II and provide new empirical materials for historical political economy. We will consider the second world war in France at various geographic level and period of time to gauge its impacts on inequality within and between areas. In addition to spatial and time variations, the project aims at studying inequalities as a whole, should they be inter-generational or gender-based.

The objective of this project is to identify urban and regional mobility policies adapted to a pandemic context, similar to the challenges that have been raised by the current COVID-19 crisis. We will use a multimodal transportation simulation model to examine scenarios where strict health regulations are in force. Both periods of confinement and periods after confinement will be considered. The solutions we will propose focus on public transport supply to be developed in this context, as well as the opportunities that a significant shift to micromobility (bike, in particular) could bring. In each of the scenarios we will examine, an assessment of the level of emissions in order to draw up an energy and environmental picture of the situation. Concerning micromobility, the rules of social distancing are relatively easier to follow, and this represents an opportunity to reduce the level of emissions, energy consumption and, at the same time, to face the epidemiological situation. This research will benefit from a multimodal transportation model that we are already developing for the departments of the “Nord” and “Pas-de-Calais”. This model is now under the process of calibration and some preliminary simulations has been already performed. The framework we have used is based on a structured representation of agents' activities. This approach allows us to directly take into account changes in the rhythm of daily life, such as the development of teleworking. We will explicitly integrate an epidemiological model as well as the health measures adopted in public transport (e.g., reduction in vehicle loads, mandatory mask wearing, etc.). This research will enable us to make recommendations for adjustments in transport services to limit the spread of the pandemic while maintaining an appropriate level of service. As new opportunities for urban transport, where the majority of the trips are short and medium distances, we will focus on micromobility and its articulation with public transport supply.

Individuals’ decisions about the environment usually occur in the presence of some degree of uncertainty about the effect of those decisions. Uncertainty is especially pervasive in the context of climate change, where decision consequences depend on complex socio-economic dynamics and their interactions with the climate system. Often, the decision-maker faces ambiguity (unknown probabilities). How does the individual cope with this ambiguity, and how is the decision shaped by the decision-maker’s attitude toward ambiguity? The project ENDURA proposes to study this question from the behavioral perspective, which acknowledges that humans find it difficult to make decisions under risk and, especially, ambiguity. Unlike the Bayesian decision-maker envisaged in the traditional theory, real decision-makers are imperfectly capable of processing probabilistic information. Psychological phenomena such as likelihood insensitivity and ambiguity aversion play a role, implying fundamental departures from the traditional theory. By taking the behavioral approach, which allows for such psychological phenomena, ENDURA aims at a deeper and more accurate explanation of the role played by uncertainty in climate decision-making. Three specific objectives will be addressed: (1) deriving new theoretical insights about the role of uncertainty in climate action, based on behavioral theories of decision under uncertainty, in order to explain why and how people’s preferred climate action may diverge from the optimal action (implied under the Bayesian paradigm); (2) characterizing and exploring the empirical properties of people’s attitudes toward climate uncertainty, in order to explain and predict better people’s reactions to climate policy initiatives; and (3) investigating in a unified framework the interactions of other motivational determinants of climate action with uncertainty, in order to contribute insights to the question of how motivation can be best translated into action. Behavioral theories of decision-making that can handle the phenomena such as ambiguity aversion and reference dependence have become available only relatively recently, and pragmatic measurement tools for their empirical applications have not been developed until even more recently. Many fields in economics have now begun applying them to decision-making under uncertainty, producing new insights in domains such as finance, health economics, and game theory. ENDURA proposes to extend these most recent theoretical and methodological advances in behavioral economics to the environmental domain, where applications have been lacking. The Paris Climate Agreement’s goal of holding the warming of the planet below 2°C represents the limit that gives us a fighting chance at preventing a catastrophic interference with the climate system [IPCC 2014]. Scientists warn that achieving this goal will require decarbonization of the world economy at an unprecedented scale and pace. Emissions need to be drastically brought down within this decade and eliminated altogether before the end of the century. Crucially, climate action ultimately depends on human decision-makers embracing it in every aspect of their social, political, and economic lives. The broad objective of the project is to provide new insights on how we can best motivate climate action.

This project asks how firms can design and implement effective new business models using digital technology. More specifically, we propose (a) to explore the conceptual foundations of business models in the context of recent developments in the strategic management literature, (b) to analyze the transformation of business models induced by digital technology via a comparative case study approach in two industries, and (c) to identify the key drivers and barriers to economic success in the implementation of innovative business models. Empirically, the project will conduct research on both incumbents and new entrants in health/wellbeing and digital entertainment, two industries that are particularly exposed to digital technology. In bringing together a group of experienced business model researchers from the Université de Lille and from Grenoble Ecole de Management with experts in health/wellbeing and digital entertainment from Telecom Ecole de Management, Institut Mines Telecom - Telecom Bretagne, Université de Grenoble and Inseec, the project aims to build capacity and to increase the international visibility of French business model research. It provides a unique opportunity to train both junior management researchers and future digital technology entrepreneurs (including principal investigators) in business model design, implementation and analysis. Moreover, the project will facilitate the development of longer-term collaborative ties with the participating firms in order to help improve digital technology based business models in practice through the development of actionable knowledge and the creation of platforms for business-model related exchange and learning.