About us, the Joint Research Unit Public Economics

The unit

On January 1, 2022, a new unit, Paris-Saclay Applied Economics (PSAE), was created. This INRAE-AgroParisTech Joint Research Unit is the result of the merger of the ALISS and Public Economics units. It is directed by Stéphan Marette, assisted by Basak Bayramoglu and Guy Meunier. The UMR will join the new AgroParisTech-INRAE campus of the Université Paris-Saclay in July 2022.

Context and challenges

The new Joint Research Unit (UMR) is composed of about fifty permanent members from AgroParisTech and INRAE, and will host an average of forty students and trainees each year.

The new UMR Paris-Saclay Applied Economics, INRAE-AgroParisTech, is organized around three thematic axes:

• Sustainable diets
• Agricultural markets and agri-food chains.
• Sustainable production systems

and two cross-cutting axes :

• evaluation of public policies
• quantitative data and methods.

The research conducted within the UMR aims to evaluate the economic efficiency of public policies in the three thematic areas mentioned above using theoretical analyses and quantitative methods, such as econometrics, experimental economics, or market equilibrium modelling. This effort to quantify economic impacts is based on the constitution of databases with the Odalim platform.

Recent work by UMR members has focused on the role of land use in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, interactions between international trade and adaptation to climate change, the possible emergence of plant-based protein foods, the impact of the Nutri-score or Eco-score on consumer food choices, and power relations within the agri-food industry. For all these issues, the impacts of different regulatory options (taxes, subsidies, mandatory display, technical standard) on the gains (economic, nutritional, health, environmental) of agents (producers, consumers, taxpayers) are studied.

Collaborations

Within the Université Paris-Saclay, the unit is strongly involved in thematic and multidisciplinary networks (CLAND Convergence Institute, BASC).
It also maintains disciplinary collaborations with economist colleagues of the Plateau de Saclay.

The unit also maintains a network of close collaborations with national (Cepii, Cired, BRGM, Mines ParisTech) and international (IFPRI in Washington; LEI, Wageningen; Capri in Germany; IIASA in Austria; Motu in New Zealand; JRC in Ispra and Seville; SRUC in Scotland) research centers which are privileged partners in research projects.

It has links with the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, https://www.ip-paris.fr/, as well as with the Institut des Politiques Publiques, https://www.ipp.eu/, created by the Paris School of Economics.

Teaching

The UMR is strongly involved in the engineering curriculum of AgroParisTech, the Institut Polytechnique de Paris (Master in Economics, Cycle Ingénieur polytechnicien), as well as in the Master in Economics of the Environment, Energy and Transport (EEET), and the Master of Economics (MoE) of the Université Paris-Saclay.

The objective of the new UMR Paris-Saclay Applied Economics (PSAE) is to cover a thematic field comparable to that found in the Agricultural and Resource Economics departments in the United States (agriculture, food, environment), to position itself as a major player in applied economics within the University of Paris-Saclay, and to strengthen the disciplinary anchoring around quantitative methods