Yann Algan (born in Paris April 3, 1974)[1] is a French economist, Associate Dean of Pre-experience Programs and Professor of Economics atHEC Paris. He was previously and until 2021 a Professor of Economics ofSciences Po, where he was dean of the School of Public Affairs.[2] His research interests include thedigital economy,social capital andwell-being.[3] In 2009, Yann Algan (withThomas Philippon) was awarded the Prize of the Best Young Economist of France for his contributions to economics in France.[4]
A native of Paris, Yann Algan earned a master's degree in philosophy as well as a PhD from theUniversity of Paris 1 in, respectively, 1998 and 2001, being awarded the Prize for the Best French PhD thesis in 2002. After his PhD, he became an assistant professor at the University Paris 1 and held a post-doctoral position at theUniversity of California San Diego in 2002 before receiving hisagrégation in economics in 2004. He then worked at theUniversity of Paris-Est (2004–07) and later at theParis School of Economics as Professor of Economics (2006–08), but then moved toSciences Po in 2008, where he has since been working. In 2015, Algan was appointed as dean of Sciences Po's School of Public Affairs. Additionally, he has held visiting appointments at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology and atHarvard University. In parallel to his academic positions, he maintains affiliations withIZA and theCEPR, is a member of theCouncil of Economic Analysis and of the OECD High Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, and co-director of the Research Center on Labor Market Policy, a research center involving Sciences Po,CREST,DARES [fr],Pole Emploi, Unedic and Alpha. Finally, he is a senior editor of the academic reviewEconomic Policy.
Areas of Yann Algan's research includepublic economics,cultural economics,political economy,experimental economics,labour economics,social networks, andwell-being.[5] In his research, he has frequently collaborated withPierre Cahuc. A key theme of Algan's research is the importance of trust in societies and economies. For example, inThe Society of Defiance ("La société de défiance"; with Cahuc) Algan documents how distrust between French citizens among each other as well as with regard to the market economy and government has been growing since the 1990s, eroding civic behaviour, and argues that this growing distrust is both due and in turn fuels Frenchcorporatism, wherein the government regulates large aspects of citizens' lives.[6]
According toIDEAS/RePEc, Algan ranks among the top 3% of economists in terms of his research.[7] Key findings of research include the following:
Differences in inherited trust explain a substantial share of the differences in per capita incomes between countries (with Pierre Cahuc);[8] the strength of that result was later questioned by Müller, Torgler, and Uslaner (2012).[9]
Government regulation is strongly negatively correlated with measures of trust, suggesting that distrust creates public demand for regulation and regulation in turn discourages the formation of trust (with Cahuc,Philippe Aghion,Andrei Shleifer).[10]
In France, (Germany) and the UK, the gap between natives and immigrants in terms of educational achievement decreases over generations, though overall in all three countries the labour market performance of most immigrant groups as well as their descendants is generally worse than that of natives, even if differences in education, regional allocation and experience are taken into account (withChristian Dustmann,Albrecht Glitz andAlan Manning).[11]
Compared to other social scientists, economists in the U.S. have generally much higher incomes, more individualist worldviews, and a confident view on economics' ability to solve the world's problems, creating a subjective sense of authority and entitlement that sustains economists' practical involvement in and influence over the economy (with Marion Fourcade and Etienne Ollion).[12]
Civic attitudes and the design of unemployment benefits and employment protection in theOECD over the 1980s and 1990s are strongly correlated, suggesting that differences in civic virtue drive differences in labour market institutions (with Pierre Cahuc).[13]
Individuals with strong family ties are less geographically mobile, have lower wages and are more likely to be unemployed, and support more stringent labour market regulations (with Cahuc,Alberto Alesina, andPaola Giuliano).[14]
Public employment in the OECD is found to crowd out private sector employment, depresses labour force participation and increases unemployment (with Cahuc and André Zylberberg).[15]
