EMO – Economics of Markets and Organisations
Current student :Vincent Lim
1. Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
In EMO, you only have to follow four courses each semester (with an average of 12 hours of classes per week). It means that, most of the time, there are no tutorials. So, you have to understand the content and study by yourself.
The courses, focused on industrial organization, can be either classified as theoretical or empirical. In the empirical ones, you may have to present a case or a paper using econometric tools that you have never seen before, or use them in a project. The theoretical ones are very close to the industrial organization course that is taught in M1.
2. Which was your favourite course(s) and why?
In the first semester, my favourite course was Business Economics, a class given by Andrew Rhodes, but also by two external guest teachers. This class mixes theory, empirical papers, and applications to the real world.
I like this track for the freedom that is given to you. You can shape your M2 as you want. You are free to study if you want good grades, follow additional classes to prepare a PhD, work, but don’t forget to just enjoy the last year of your student life.
Alumni: Camila Jaramillo
- What are you up to now?
I just finished a project in UPS Europe Head Quarters office in Brussels, Belgium. I was working in their Revenue Management and Market analysis department, where I performed different economic and data analyses to estimate the demand and set the best price strategies to maximize the revenue of the company.
I am currently in the process of joining a consulting firm in pricing and market strategy. The main tasks there will be to identify the market, the competitors and possible substitutes to the products our clients sell. It will be a very nice challenge because I will need to use all my knowledge of microeconomics, industrial organization, finance, economic strategy, and econometrics to give complete advice to companies in different industries.
- Which skills, acquired from studying at the TSE, have you found useful?
Since I worked in the freight/parcel market that works very similarly to the air transportation market based on their capacity constraints and fixed costs, the course of the air transportation market was very useful. In particular, the first classes give you a general idea of how these kinds of industries work, and the modules about revenue and yield management they gave us at the end of the course were helpful. Besides, considering that the integrators (companies like UPS and DHL that provide all the supply change facilities for a business) offer different services and have different business segments, the courses of Business and Market strategy were key. In those courses, professors teach you how to allocate prices when a company offers multiple products and give very good insights on how to understand and react to the strategies of the competitors depending on the concentration of the market.
Nevertheless, I think that the most important skills that I acquired in TSE are not related to one specific course, but with the capacity to understand general economic problems. During my Master at TSE, I got the opportunity to analyse some business cases that include situations such as mergers, acquisitions, location decisions, double marginalization, and quantities and prices optimization, which allows me to understand how the companies should compete depending on the market structure and what would be the principal aspects to consider in order to make a complete economic analysis of these situations. Also, at TSE, I received all the econometrics, data analysis, and quantitative knowledge necessary to support my work with quantitative arguments, thus making it strong and easier to understand for people with other backgrounds.
EEE – Econometrics and Empirical Econometrics
Current student: Valentina Narvaez
- Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
I think one of the most challenging parts was at the beginning of the master. During the M1 we are not required to do much coding, thus the first challenge was to be patient and take the time to google question about the packages, even the most basic ones, such as how to upload a CSV file in Python. Another challenge has been to find a balance between school work and personal life. We usually have several projects at the same time, however, if you plan well your projects, there is time to go out with friends and exercise.
- Which was your favourite course(s) and why?
My favourite subject so far has been High Dimensional Modelling. Don’t get me wrong it’s a difficult subject. However, after taking the time to study and going through the slides, it was rewarding to understand the main concepts of the course, and even do an application using Singular Value Decomposition.
Current student: Vincent Larrieu
Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
During the EEE program, you will become familiar with several quantitative and econometric methods which are useful in economics. We mostly apply these methods to economic issues which, from my point of view, is the most interesting part of the program. Additionally, applying methods to concrete cases will provide you with some valuable experience to bring forth during interviews. However, as we mostly have 15 hours of courses per week and at least one project in each course, you have to be organized to not be overwhelmed by all the projects. For those who are already comfortable in programming, it will be easier to manage this work.
I think this master is for those who would like to have solid-skills and gain experience in empirical project management to either continue in pure statistics/econometrics or apply these methods to a specific economic field.
Which was your favourite course and why?
In the first semester, I think the most interesting course was Non-parametric Methods. Non-parametric Methods are used in a various range of econometrics and economics, such as measuring the distributional effects of a public policy on a population. It is easy to implement once you have the theoretical background. Finally, the projects we had to do made us improve our programming skills, which are highly valuable.
In the second semester, the most interesting course seems to be Program Evaluation. It was an interesting topic in M1 and the M2 course goes even further. It is great for students like me who would like to work in the public sector. Since the goal is to measure the impact of public policies, EEE students can link the program to a field in which they would like to evolve. Generally speaking, courses in the second semester are more interesting from my point of view, as we apply our skills to economic fields such as industrial organization or finance.
Alumni: Rolando Hernandez
- What are you up to now?
I am a Research Assistant at the World Bank Development Research Group in Washington DC, United States. This group is the main research department inside the bank. I am currently working with two researchers building comparable statistics on taxable income of firms across countries with different levels of income. The objective is to construct a cross-country firm dataset from administrative tax return data. With micro-level administrative tax data provided by government officials, we are able to produce a dataset with statistics on effective tax rates, reported profit margins and growth dynamics across firm size distribution. The project allows us to study other research questions including the evolution of firm-size distribution over the course of development, firms’ behavioural responses to the tax system and the effects of tax reforms. Moreover, the department also provides daily academic seminars; an opportunity I have used to expand my knowledge in different areas of economic research.
- Which skills, acquired from studying at TSE, have you found useful?
As a former M1 Economics and M2 EEE student, I would say that my two years at TSE gave me different but complementary skills. The first year provided a strong theoretical understanding of various economic problems. These theoretical skills are extremely necessary for any RA position.
Yet, in my daily tasks, it is my technical background that allows me to produce all the necessary analysis. In my opinion, the strength of this M2 program comes from the strong technical skills gained during the course of the Master. Additionally, the ability to comfortably handle multiple programming languages is by far the most sought skill in many sectors. The program’s structure for most of the courses is introducing an econometric method and then moving to technical exercises, which creates a great theoretical/technical balance that distinguishes EEE from the other M2 programs.
ERNA – Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
Current student: Isabelle Bourdier
- Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
The Master provides both theoretical and empirical aspects of environmental economics. Depending on the classes you take, there are more or less empirical papers to read. At first sight, it can be seen as a lot of work, especially at the beginning of the semester. However, I think that this is necessary to understand the different situations that arise in the real world and how the empirical methods are used. The hardest part is getting used to read long papers.
- Which was your favorite course(s) and why?
In the first semester, I liked the Valuing the Environment course because we studied different environmental valuation methods in various topics such as transportation, air quality, health, wildlife, forestry, etc. At the beginning of the class, we studied the theoretical foundations of the different methods. Later on, we had to study in depth many papers about non-marketed goods, which I found interesting. Throughout the class, everyone had to present a paper. The final evaluation was to perform a critique of a paper as well as a critique of another student’s work. During the day of the presentations, the teacher launched a debate and it was up to each student to take part and present with their own point of views. I think it was a good way to teach us to have a critical opinion. I also like the fact that we can choose our courses among many electives in the second semester.
Alumni (ERNA – Ecology Track): Luke Edwards
- What are you up to now?
I am about to start a position as a Climate Change and Land-Use Policy Officer as part of BirdLife, Europe’s policy team based in Brussels. My role will be to help ensure that EU policies on the interface between climate action, agriculture, forestry, energy, and circular economy are ecologically sound and contribute to effective climate mitigation without increasing pressure on biodiversity. To achieve this, I will support and coordinate BirdLife Partnership’s work on these policy areas, represent and promote BirdLife’s views to the EU Institutions, as well as help design and deliver campaigns aiming to achieve policy priorities of both organizations.
- Which skills, acquired from studying at the TSE, have you found useful?
The ERNA Ecology Track has ideally positioned me for this role by providing the skill set to identify and assess concurrent and legacy economic and environmental impacts from agricultural, energy and climate change policies on a regional scale, and the resulting impact on primary sectors in individual countries. Courses at TSE provide the skills not only to analyze economic impacts of environmental policies, but also recognize and account for the economic benefits that biodiversity supplies through ecosystem services like pollination, provision of clean water, and carbon storage. This knowledge can be applied to policy decisions to assess whether policies result in the optimal use of natural resources, and sustainable harvest rates that preserve species populations.
The ecology courses completed in conjunction with Paul Sabatier University at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Moulis. They provide an understanding of the structure of ecosystems and the identification of key species, which if promoted through policy, can result in wider benefits to regional biodiversity. The combination of ecology and economics thus delivers skills to integrate ecological models into economic analysis in order to provide a more dynamic and holistic cost-benefit analysis and guidance for policies.
Finance
Current Student: Alexandre Briois
- Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
The most challenging part of the program I chose (FIRE M2) was definitely to adapt the way I handled theoretical problems, as they are quite different from what we learn in a classical economics program. The need to focus more on studying the P&L and the stakeholders instead of agents theoretical behaviours was quite a new approach to me. In order to be able to better understand some complex financial products, we have learnt about several techniques used by investors worldwide.
It was challenging to capture all the underlying effects of a given situation, especially on financial hedging strategies for instance. Despite the fact that many of the tools used in finance are widely known, these instruments are very often tricky and need to be understood thoroughly and handled properly by anyone wanting to work efficiently in the financial industry.
- Which was your favourite course(s) and why?
The course I liked the most was about asset pricing. It covered a lot of aspects of the industry operations, a part that I have found extremely interesting. Additionally, the knowledge acquired during this course turned out to be extremely valuable during my preparation for job interviews. We also learnt about many different products and markets, so in a short period of time being prepared for many internships positions in financial institutions.
Alumni: Emilien Simioni
- What are you up to now?
I have been working for two years as a Business Developer at BinckBank, a Dutch online broker. My job consists of analysing the French and the European markets to detect business opportunities. The job is mostly composed of business studies, strategic analysis and meetings with potential partners or clients. Once an opportunity is found and can be developed, my task is to manage the project, to make sure all relevant teams (developers, marketing, legal, etc…) are properly working on it and that deadlines are met. The financial industry is a challenging landscape with a lot of opportunities. The most important thing to understand is that our job is to make sure that we meet our clients’ needs.
- Which skills, acquired from studying at TSE, have you found useful?
The Master in Finance I undertook in TSE (Financial and Risk Evaluation) taught me the basic skills required in Finance (derivatives, asset pricing, asset management…). I’m using those concepts on a daily basis to understand different situations, to analyse strategic moves but also to provide my managers with business opportunities. More than a specific skill, I would like to say that TSE offers a unique training on how to think and how to act. TSE forms students to be open-minded, reactive and passionate about their jobs.
ECL – Economics and Competition Law
Current student: Camille Quideau
- Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
The Economics and Competition Law program is challenging in the depth of the knowledge offered and required by the courses. Competition is a substantial part of industrial organization and merely being able to examine the market structure and firms’ strategic behaviour is not enough. Aside from receiving lectures of increased technicality, we receive deeper insights into the functioning of competition law and the importance of competition authorities in the market. The program has a lot to do with studying and understanding both the economic theory of harm and the juridical law reasoning of competition policies. This requires a lot of reading and autonomous work. It can also be rather demanding to be constantly switching from law to economic theory and empirical work. However, this has been the particularity of the Competition and Law track since day one. Although, this year has been more enjoyable and exciting.
2.Which was your favourite course and why?
My favourite course is Topics and Cases in Competition Policy, given by Yassine Lefouili. What I like the most about this class is that each lecture is very informative and teaches a lot about the practical approach a competition economist and/or lawyer should apply when assessing a case. This course runs on both semesters and offers the opportunity to learn from leading specialists in the field. Indeed, most of the lectures are given by practitioners from law firms, courts, competition authorities, and economic consultancies. The ECL program’s similarity to the real world helps us become the kind of economist and/or lawyer we want to be.
Alumni : Tristan Salmon
- What are you up to now?
I currently work as an Analyst in the Brussels office of Compass Lexecon, an economic consulting firm. My work mainly focuses on European Commission competition cases. I started as an intern in April 2018 and was lucky enough to receive an offer to become a full-time analyst in October.
2. Which skills, acquired from studying at the TSE, have you found useful?
A big part of the job involves working with data to produce various analyses, so the applied econometrics classes I took in Toulouse were very useful and made the transition to working at Compass a lot easier.
The courses I took in industrial organisation and competition economics were also very important to understand the broader context of the cases we work on and to be able to discuss the particularities of the cases. Make sure that you make the most of your time at TSE to understand the industry as well as you can!
While the technical and theoretical tools that I learned were essential, I would say that the soft skills I learned at TSE were the most useful, especially when working with people from all over the world on a daily basis. Studying in a very diverse environment with people from different backgrounds, as well as being part of the TSEconomist team gave me the tools to quickly adapt to this new life in Brussels!
PPD – Public Policy and Development
Current student: William L’Heudé
- Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
The most challenging aspect of the PPD program is surely the wide variety of topics we cover, from the economic effects of political institutions and governance issues to the industrial organization of infrastructure and network industries. This diversity requires us to be quite flexible in terms of theoretical thinking and empirical analysis.
In addition, almost all the courses made us complete a project which I find particularly interesting since it allows us to think about the original topics or innovative approaches not yet addressed in the literature. For instance, in the lecture “Empirical Methods in Development”, we carried out a group project on a randomized controlled trial aimed at assessing the effects of organizing informal waste pickers in Namibia. This project was challenging as this issue had never been explored before.
- Which was your favourite course(s) and why?
My favourite course during the first semester was the Microeconomics of Development. It focused on the economics of infrastructure in the energy, transport, water, information, and communication technology sectors and I particularly liked doing an empirical project on the air quality effect of the opening of a metro system in Mumbai.
During this second semester, I am enjoying two courses: Econometrics of Program Evaluation and Topics in Applied Econometrics and Development. Their objective is to provide students with technical tools to implement policy evaluations. These lectures are very practical which is really useful to understand the development economics’ literature and to gain insights into real-life applications.
Alumni: José Carlos Ortega
- What are you up to now?
I work at the OECD in Paris as a consultant for the Health Division. Since I finished my internship, I have been working on new approaches for forecasting obesity and overweight rates worldwide. I was lucky enough to be offered a position in the Health Division. My primary mission is to provide support regarding health statistics and data visualisation. Currently, I am involved in an ambitious project that tries to gather and share evidence about the state of the health in the EU. In partnership with the European Commission and the European Observatory on Health Policy, we are constructing country health profiles which provide a specific snapshot of the population’s state of health and a brief assessment of the efficiency of health systems.
One of the main reasons I decided to stay at the OECD is to gain some health-related policy experience. Aiming at an eventual PhD degree in Health Economics, I’m always eager to learn further and get in-depth approaches of health systems and health behaviours. Now, I’m collaborating with and learning from experts and experienced people in the fields of economics which interests me the most. In the OECD, we have a fantastic environment that promotes multidisciplinary knowledge sharing, and this experience will hopefully help me find the right direction to develop a meaningful research topic I feel passionate about.
2. Which skills, acquired from studying at the TSE, have you found useful?
The courses in applied econometrics have been of great help, as most of the work done in health economics is empirical and requires a good knowledge of micro-econometric techniques and ability to work with data. In this regard, courses like “Health Econometrics” and “Empirical Methods for Development Economics” provided me with a good understanding of problems arising when designing empirical identification effect strategies.
In addition, many PPD courses are focused on explaining the complexity of the social, political and economic systems in which policies try to intervene to fix market failures. Classes such as “Economic Effects of Political Institutions” were excellent to understand complex links and interactions between the mentioned systems and the cautiousness that should be maintained in any policy intervention.
I also have significantly benefited from the very international soul of TSE. Thanks to the university’s multicultural environment, I now feel very comfortable working in an international organization. Moreover, the network of friends I have been able to develop during my studies is very valuable to me, both in a professional and a personal level. I would even go beyond and say that every TSE alumni is a friendly hand who is of great help when needed.
However, what I probably value the most about TSE is its spirit devoted to rigorous and honest scientific research. It may just sound like the slogan of the university, but it is true indeed. At TSE, I developed my passion for economics and understood how necessary it is to be honest in what we do. I believe these two values are very well appreciated by the private, the academic and the public sector, especially nowadays that our field has become discredited and that the world challenges are in need of good economics.
ECO-STAT – Statistics and Econometrics
Current student: Bastien François
- Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
The main objective of the Statistics and Econometrics Master’s degree is to provide students with a solid base in the major areas of applied statistics. It results in having many classes and projects on various fields of applications, such as Big data, Data Mining or Time Series. This allows us to have an overview of different statistical approaches and to develop a wide range of statistical tools, ready for use in a professional context. Although it can sometimes be sometimes hard to find enough time to delve into every subject covered in class, it is a great opportunity for students to expand statistical knowledge alongside both leading researchers and business professionals.
- Which was your favourite course(s) and why?
Extreme Value Theory is my favourite course so far. It provides statistical tools to predict the occurrence of rare events. The domains of application of Extreme Value Theory are large and include financial events (financial crises), insurance (claims due to catastrophic events), earth sciences (hurricanes), etc. Taking this elective course has been really appealing to me since it has allowed me to understand very important methods to analyze all kinds of rare events. Anticipating large-magnitude impacts on extreme events is of great importance for decision-makers, which makes this course fascinating for future economists.
Alumni: Guillaume Simo
- What are you up to now?
Since the beginning of November, I have currently working for Decathlon Canada in Montreal as an AI engineer/data scientist for Decathlon Canada, in Montreal. Having completed my M2 internship at Decathlon Belgium in Brussels, I received a few job offers. One of them was from a consulting firm in the South of France, while two others were from Decathlon: in Brussels, and in Montreal, where the firm’s inaugural Canadian store is located.
I am currently working mainly on retail personalisation by implementing algorithms for the personalised recommendation of products. Each member of the team is “in charge” of a project, but we often work together. This means that I am involved in image analysis, models of sports recommendations, and in work on dashboards used to make data accessible internally.
- Which skills, acquired from studying at the TSE, have you found useful?
As a data scientist, I would say that the programming skills I learned at TSE were the most useful. My current work requires me to make extensive use of Python, SQL, and a bit of R.
Furthermore, I believe that having had a lot of projects with deadlines to deal with, as well as group work with the statistical consulting, provided me with good training for professional work, where soft skills are just as important as the technical ones.
Concerning specific classes, “Introduction to big data” in M1, “Data mining” in M2, projects in Kaggle, as well as lessons taught by data science professionals were the most useful.
Finally, it is helpful to have acquired strong knowledge in mathematics, statistics, and econometrics, as this allows one to understand new machine learning models. Considering the speed at which this field is evolving, this is an essential quality.
ETE – Economic Theory and Econometrics
Current student: Nicolás Martínez Franco
- Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
ETE’s main goal is to select and prepare you for a PhD, and thus for a life of research. Since generally this is considered a very competitive career path, the master is designed to resemble it. The number of topics that teachers want to cover is very large, but they will rush on several occasions due to time limitations. You are expected to learn many of those topics on your own, which might be quite challenging.
I would say that the biggest challenge is to handle the pressure and anxiety of the PhD’s selection process. It will probably lead you to ask yourself: “Why did I choose to do this?” Which is why it is necessary to always keep in mind your goals and dreams. Having a good group of friends, to study with and who support each other, has been extremely important for me this year.
- Which was your favourite course(s) and why?
Being the first building block of a PhD, all the courses cover the theory of different economic fields with the formality you should expect at a Graduate level. Even the ‘applied’ courses tend to focus more on the theory required for their use and not on actual applications. This can lead to some ‘hard to endure’ lectures in every course.
That said, the optional courses during the second semester will finally allow you to study the kind of specialised topics you will deal with in your research. Even with the huge workload of the master, I would advise you to attend seminars in your fields of interest. This will allow you to see more applied work and to think of better ideas for your M2 thesis.
Alumni: Hippolyte Boucher
- What are you up to now?
I’m in my 1st year of PhD at TSE. During this year we still have to take some advanced courses and at the end of the year, we will obtain a diploma. This is very similar to how other top PhD programs in Economics work. Personally, I’m taking classes in Theoretical Econometrics and Public Economics as these are my main research interest for now. The workload is heavy but most of the PhD students, myself included, are still enjoying our courses.
If you are interested in doing a PhD, you should definitely apply to the M2 ETE. If you are accepted, you will be surrounded by very smart people, you will have the time to develop your own thoughts and you will go much further than in M2 since you will read a lot of papers from renowned journals (like Econometrica, the Chicago Journal of Political Economy, etc.). Additionally, at TSE, you have a lot of seminars every week, where professors and PhDs from other top Universities (including the Ivy League) present their work. You will hardly find anything as intellectually stimulating elsewhere.
- Which skills, acquired from studying at the TSE, have you found useful?
I have always been into mathematics and statistics, that is why I completed the M1 Eco-Stats MAD, before starting the M2 ETE two years ago. In M1, I had good grades in Micro and Macro courses, but I did not really understand their core concepts. M2 ETE did more than fill that gap, I’m now familiar with most of the Micro and Macro concepts there are. Learning all of this was very difficult, I spent a tremendous amount of my time last year on Micro and Macro and not so much on Econometrics, which happens to be my strong subject. On the opposite side, other M2 ETE students had a stronger background in Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and Game Theory, so they struggled more with Econometrics and the rigorous maths required at the PhD level Micro and Macro.
Overall, whatever your initial background is, if you choose this M2, and even if you don’t complete it, I can assure you: you will become a well-rounded economist ready to start a PhD in TSE and in other top universities.
Économie Appliquée
Current student: Helena Le Mezo
- Which aspects of your chosen program were the most challenging?
The program is very general and covers many different topics: macroeconomics, international trade, quantitative marketing, and the evaluation of public policies are all examples of courses we have to take.
While this can be a positive thing, it also means that we must often work independently if we want to learn something specific. This implies speaking with professors and letting them know that there is a topic you’d like to cover. Fortunately, the program is still quite new and the professors are very open, and are often happy to adapt their curriculum to our needs and interests. This is, however, only possible if you are proactive and talk to the professors, which can be challenging at first.
- What was your favourite course, and why?
All the classes were interesting, especially since some of the professors come from the private sector (Matteo Mogliani from Bank of France, for instance), and are thus a great source of inspiration and insight. This is particularly helpful when thinking of what we would like to do after graduation, and what we can learn and do in order to get there.
I especially enjoyed the Public Policy class. I am interested in macroeconomics and central banking, and while we do have a class covering macroeconomics, the material was not covering the evaluation of public monetary policy. The professor was receptive to my concern and adapted a module in which we spent some time looking at a policy that was very relevant to my interests and career inspirations.
Alumni: Raphaël Sitruk
- What are you up to now?
I am currently working at the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA) as an audience analyst and, more broadly, as a data analyst. I applied for this position after completing a six months internship at the CSA.
Using data of television and radio audiences, I produce monthly audience records and also analysis on more specific topics.
As a data analyst, I am also working with a large amount of data, from which I need to extract insightful results. In addition to this, I am in charge of the automatisation process. This will, for instance, consist of extracting and sorting data from existing files in an automatic manner.
To summarise, the goal of my work is to try to make the institution and the audiovisual world more efficient, with the help of data analysis.
2. Which skills, acquired from studying at TSE, have you found useful?
The first that come to mind are the programming skills. By learning how to work with a large amount of data – scraping, sorting, and providing results – through code, I was able to acquire several tools that opened up work opportunities in various areas. These programming skills are one of the reasons why I was able to apply for an internship and a position at the CSA.
Secondly, studying at the TSE taught me a very important skill: how to reason wisely. It may sound trite, but working with a lot of data can lead one to a situation where some results comfort our opinions, when they are actually methodologically wrong or biased. Being aware of this and following a clear thought process is vital. This is a skill that the TSE provided to every student, in large part due to the strong focus on the rigorous mathematical foundation of economics.
Thirdly, it is important to point out that, besides technical skills, studying at the TSE provides you with a vast network and a great head start to your career. The TSE’s increasing reputation carries over to the job market, whatever Master you choose.
The TSEconomist 