France Opens a New Economics Institute Meant to Rival Top Schools in U.S. and Britain

[Grinch]

France Opens a New Economics Institute Meant to Rival Top Schools in U.S. and Britain

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin presided over the inauguration last week of the Paris School of Economics, a new institution that its founders hope will eventually rival economics powerhouses like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The new institution was formed through the collaboration of six existing French universities and research institutions, including the prestigious Йcole Normale Supйrieure and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, or National Center for Scientific Research. All six partner institutions are public, but the new institution will be run by a newly created private foundation.


(для полной версии статьи см. "The Chronicle" 02.28.2007)

[Grinch]

Paris seeks to rival top economics institutes.
Financial Times - 24 February 2007

France produced its answer to Harvard and the London School of Economics with this week's opening of an economics institute that aims to draw top researchers to the country and give Europe new weight in international economic debate.

The Paris School of Economics, formed by a collaboration of six research institutions, will grow to host 900 postgraduate students and 350 research staff, drawing on public funds but also on private partners and its own endowments.

Dominique de Villepin, prime minister, opened the school on Thursday, saying it would rival the world's top institutions and allow "the construction of a French and European economic doctrine".

Its structure has broken taboos in the French higher education system, where the elite grandes ecoles cling fiercely to their individual traditions and a clear separation from the non-selective university system.

The selective PSE will draw staff from four grandes ecoles, the Paris-I university and a national research centre, a model many observers think is needed for French higher education to compete in international rankings.

Thomas Piketty, the school's director, told Le Monde that starting the project had been "like setting up Microsoft in the Soviet Union", an indication of the doubts it provoked even among its backers.

But he argues that the mix of public and private funding, and its status as a foundation, is essential to give the PSE flexibility in choosing what research to finance, and what to pay researchers.

Axa, the insurer, and Exane, the investment company, have each put in Euros 1m (Dollars 1.3m, Pounds 670,000), and will hold a seat on the PSE's board, which has no state representative.

The PSE estimates that public funds could shrink to less than a third of its finances by 2010, with income from its own endowments rising to a third.

The revolution is already bearing fruit. The PSE has little prospect of matching US academic salaries, but it hopes to set a European standard, and has succeeded in tempting economists such as Philippe Aghion, known for his work on endogenous growth theory, back from Harvard for a six-month sabbatical.

It boasts an advisory council studded with Nobel Prize winners, including Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, the development economist and philosopher.

Even with this pedigree, the PSE will have its work cut out to win the international recognition of the American business schools, the LSE or of France's own top-ranking economics school in Toulouse.

However, with programmes including a training course for school teachers, the PSE could help to plug a gap in French understanding of economics that has frustrated politicians seeking to cut budget deficits, and chief executives hoping for labour market reform.

"The only book on economics that's read in schools is Germinal," one chief executive told the FT recently, referring to Emile Zola's epic on the birth of the trade union movement in France's 19th-century coal mines.

The school aims to add a European voice to the academic debate currently dominated by US institutions. "It's not healthy that a handful of American universities should monopolise the production of economic knowledge," Mr Piketty has said.

However, his background, and that of other founders, suggests the PSE's work could help to balance the traditional French distrust of market economics.