Biography

Éric BROUSSEAU is professor of economics and management at Paris-Dauphine University, a member of PSL University. He holds the ‘Governance and Regulation’ Chair and is the scientific director or the ‘Club des Régulateurs’. He is also the director of the PSL Institute for ‘Applied Computational Social Sciences’ (ACSS), a component of the PRAIRIE Institute (Paris Artificial Intelligence Research Institute). He is Research Fellow with the DG EcFin of the European Commission and collaborates on a regular basis with the European University Institute in Florence, in particular with the Florence School of Regulation. He is an honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

He is the founder and director of the Institutional and Organizational Economics Academy (IOEA), and a past-president of the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics (SIOE).

His research focuses on economic governance and market regulation. He is interested in how actors’ strategies influence the organization and evolution of institutions framing economic activities; hence in-depth work on the governance and regulation in various contemporary or historical contexts, national or transnational, as well as on the interactions between self-regulation and public regulation.

He has written extensively on the digital transformation, both from an organizational and institutional perspectives, as well as on institutional frameworks favoring innovation and supporting knowledge transfers. He also developed research on the governance of the ecological transition.

In Dauphine, he is the co-director of the Master programs in "Information Systems, Networks and Digital Technology" (SIREN). He is one of the founders of the Master program "Network Industries and Digital Economy" (IREN), co-accredited by Dauphine, Polytechnique, Télécom Paris and the University of Paris Saclay. In the context of PSL, he has also been involved in the development of the Master program "AI and Society", a joint initiative between Dauphine and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, aimed at training students with a double specialization in data sciences and social sciences.

Carreer

After graduating in economics and management at the University Sorbonne Paris Nord (1987), I earned a PhD in economics in 1991. I became assistant professor in the fall of 1991, and full professor in economics in June 1994. I then held positions at the University of Loraine (1994-2000) and Paris-Nanterre (2000-2011), before joining the University of Paris-Dauphine|PSL (2011).

I was appointed junior member of the IUF in 2002 for my work on the economics of the Internet. I was part-time professor at the EUI in 2011 and 2012. I am currently a fellow with PRAIRIE/Paris School of AI, and with the DG Ecfin from the European Commission.

From 1994 to 2000, I was scientific director, then director, of the center for the analysis of organization and markets (ATOM) at the University of Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne. At the University of Paris-Nanterre, I was appointed as director of EconomiX, a significant research unit in economics in the Paris region (2005-2011). I was also the head of the CNRS research consortium (GDR) "Information and Communication Technologies and Society" from 2002 to 2009. I was the director of the Dauphine Doctoral School from 2014 to 2019.

I developed research funded by the French public authorities, the European Commission, the American NSF, the United Nations, and the OECD.

My research has given rise to more than 60 articles in peer-reviewed journal. I also edited about ten symposia in peer-reviewed journals and around ten collective volumes, mainly published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and the MIT Press.

Research: 

My research initially focused on the analysis of contracts between economic agents, on the one hand, and on organizational transformations driven by digital technology, on the other. It has expanded to the dynamics of institutional systems in connection with economic and social development, and to innovations in governance driven by digital technology or necessary for the ecological transition.

In recent years, I have been mainly focusing on the analysis of the institutions framing exchange, cooperation and innovation. I am interested in how the strategies of the various stakeholders, in particular economic operators, participate in the organization of industries and markets. It leads to analyze the non-market strategies of corporations as they engage in actions to structure and transform the institutional frameworks framing their activities : regulations, legal framework, transnational governance mechanisms, etc. It consists also in studying the interactions between the strategic, political, and legal drivers of institutional developments.

My research has a strong empirical dimension and is based on in-depth investigations on various industrial, national and historical contexts.

My work has been organized along three main topics :

The institutional organization of markets: 

Markets are sophisticated social technologies resulting from processes of emergence and evolution that are difficult to control. Clashes among conflicting interests seeking to establish situations of domination or means of protection against risks, combined with competition driven efforts of rationalization and innovation result, into very imperfect institutional architectures, yet difficult to reform. Focusing on the interplay between the economic, political, and legal drivers of evolutions renews the analysis of economic governance by analyzing the details of how market institutions are built and work in practice; hence extensive work on the regulation and the organization of markets in various national or transnational, historical or contemporary contexts, with a focus on networks based and digital industries, creative activities and innovation, as well as market for technologies. The way value is created through alternative business models and their sustainability is also explored by combining economics of innovation, economics of information and industrial organization.

Institutional dynamics: 

Understanding the institutional framework of markets leads to the adoption of a broader perspective aimed at analyzing the interactions between economic, political, and civic actors. I have been studying the strategic interactions between stakeholders in the construction and evolution of formal and informal, public and private institutional frameworks, as well as the competition among alternative institutional solutions. This line of research focuses on the co-development of legal systems establishing rights, with state apparatus providing public goods, linking them with the development or impediment of exchange and competition. It also focuses on competition and complementarities among alternative modes of governance. This has been leading to explore the development and evolution of state machineries, and the articulation between modes and levels of political and economic governance.

Transnational governance: 

The current international economic (and civic) space is characterized by the development of specific governance mechanisms, which emerge in the absence of a central government, and question the existing nation-states, not to mention their decisive impact for global business strategies. I am interested in the emergence and properties of these mechanisms, particularly in the case of the digital and information society, and of the environment. 

Work in progress and forthcoming publications:

Since the 2010s, and in line with the creation of the “Governance and Regulation” chair in 2015, my research has mainly focused on the analysis of the institutional framework of economic activities. I am particularly interested in the strategies of the different stakeholders participating in the organization of institutional frameworks that shape the dynamics of industries and markets.

In this context, I have been interested in the dynamics of emergence and evolution of governance mechanisms governing international trade. In a Handbook published by Oxford University Press, we have brought together around forty contributions from economists, lawyers, managers and historians, in particular, showing how the action of private operators (industrial companies, but also commercial intermediaries, professional associations or legal experts) is articulated with the action of public authorities (whether governments, but also regulators or judges) to create a wide variety of mechanisms governing transnational transactions, international trade, and the provision of public goods, with numerous feedbacks on the performance of national economic governance regimes.

In addition, I contributed to this volume with an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of the emergence of a mixed private-public governance of the Internet at the international level in which the intervention of Western states is articulated with self-regulation implemented by tech companies and large users. I also analyzed the potential and limits (for example in terms of cybersecurity) of this mode of governance.

With another multidisciplinary group of scholars, we are conducting a comparative analysis across the G20 countries of the governance of many industries (i.a. bank and finance, energy, transport, telecommunications, digital technology, and the media). Our work, to be published by Cambridge University Press, highlights how the model of governance by independent regulatory authorities translates in practice into infinite variations linked to the specificities of each national institutional frameworks.

In a complementary work, carried out on the European Union, we show that there is however a dynamic of convergence. We highlight that, despite their diversity, regulatory agencies play a key role in providing objective and verified information to all stakeholders involved in regulated industries making the games among these actors more transparent and more based on evidence and contributing to leveling the playing field.

In this perspective of better understanding the games of actors around regulations, two papers also based on data sciences methodologies highlight how European organizations, in particular the European Court of Justice and the European Commission, have been developing strategies to navigate between the interests of Member States and those of the industry, and succeeded in reinforcing both their legitimacy, and the cohesion across jurisdictions.

In addition to this work on institutional dynamics, interactions among stakeholders, and corporations’ non-market strategies and, the work carried out by my team is organized around two more specific topics.

First, we work on the governance and regulation of digital activities. Beyond the analysis of the development of European arsenal for digital regulation, I also work more specifically on the governance of emerging technologies. For instance, we have been analyzing issues related to immersive technologies or artificial intelligence from 2023, and an edited volume on the issue should be completed in 2025.

We work also on the regulatory frameworks to be implemented to deal with the climate change challenge and the ecologic transition. Whether in energy or transport, regulatory models must nowadays meet the challenges triggered by more distributed industrial systems, and by value chains articulating heterogeneous business models.

On both issues, research projects are in progress in cooperation with operators and public agencies and I supervise doctoral and post-doctoral research projects.

Research Groups

My work is currently developed in the context of two research initiatives, which I launched

The Governance & Regulation Chair

The "Governance and Regulation" Chair is currently the main vector of my research and my scientific projects. It is also an important tool for contributing to the dissemination of research and to reflect on public policies.

The G&R Chair benefit from the support of 23 permanent partners (7 corporations, 4 consulting firms, 8 regulatory agencies, 4 public institutions), which fund research but also provide expertise and data. Beyond them, the capabilities accumulated by the Chair have made it possible to initiate partnerships on targeted projects with additional partners (corporations, industrial associations, public agencies). These cooperations allow the funding of work programs as well as doctoral and post-doctoral positions. Over the past years, the Chair has been able to fund a permanent team of about 10 doctoral students and 4 post-doctoral students. From the creation of the Chair in 2010, 18 doctoral research and 300 scientific publications have been achieved. The Chair also organizes regular academic seminars, and at least one significant scientific event every 18 months.

In terms of dissemination of research and contribution to the policy dialogue, the Chair has been organizing more than 100 conferences, representing an audience of about 10,000 attendants. It also published about 60 policy notes and a wide set of videos (synthesis, interviews, pedagogic material).

The PSL “Applied Computational Social Sciences” Institute

The ACSS Institute is made up of a team of 5 data scientists and the development computing resources in the aim of collecting, cleaning, storing and analyzing large heterogeneous datasets. Launched in 2022, this project is an extension of an experimental initiative funded by the University PSL for five years (2017-2021) — ‘Governance Analytics’ — which made it possible to develop the necessary know-how to establish the ACCS Institute.

The Institute mobilizes more than 25 scientific project leaders, who themselves gather a group of around 60 senior and 30 junior researchers (doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows). In 2023, ACSS was awarded with a SESAME grant by the Region Ile de France to fund a computing cluster.

The ACSS Institute is developing several projects of its own, such as the creation of a set of databases intended to analyze decision-making within European institutions. It is also developing several partnerships, for instance : with ARCOM on the analysis of audiovisual commercials ; with DITP (delegation for the modernization of public administration) on the reactions of users of public services ; or with France Université, on the professional trajectories of doctoral graduates.

In addition to its role in project development, the Institute is involved in the building of a community of social scientists developing research based on data sciences (seminars, working groups, etc.). The team is also involved in various teaching and training programs targeting researchers in social sciences.

In 2024, the ACSS Institute became associated with the PRAIRIE Institute/Paris School of Artificial Intelligence.

Cooperation Networks and Research Consortia:

Trans-disciplinarity

My field of research — the economics of organizations and institutions — lies at the crossroads of several disciplines — including economics, management, law, political science, sociology, and history — which explains my involvement in interdisciplinary collaborations. Also, my research on the digital transformation as well as on the ecological transition led me to conduct these collaborations beyond the social sciences, particularly with engineering sciences, and more recently with data-sciences. In addition to the management of research and editorial projects, this led me to develop several consortia. Among others, I created and led the CNRS GDR (research network) “Information and Communication Technologies and Society” (2002-2009), and I was one of the founding members of the Master program, “Network Industries and Digital Economy” (IREN), launched in 2009 and then jointly operated by six higher education organizations, among which three engineering schools (Polytechnique, Télécom-Paris, Supélec).

Recent years have been characterized by the renewal of research methods in social sciences driven by digital technologies. The digital transformation makes it possible to collect and process heterogeneous data at a large scale, strengthening the study of organized collective action, the governance of social groups, collective dynamics and the complex causalities characterizing collective behaviors and their consequences. The tools provided by data sciences and artificial intelligence, not only allow scientific advances, but they are also useful for economic, political and social actors. In this aim, I initiated the settlement, in the framework of PSL, of a platform for pooling resources and skills at the interface between social sciences and data sciences: the "Applied Computational Social Sciences" (ACSS) Institute.

International Networks

My career is also characterized by a strong international involvement. During my PhD, I was visiting scholar at MIT, which allowed me to meet the main contributors to the Economics of  Contracts and to the New Institutional Economics.

In the 1990s, I became involved in the launching, under the leadership of Ronald Coase, Douglas North and Oliver Williamson, of what became the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics (SIOE). I held various positions within this organization and became its president in 2014.

In 2002, I initiated an annual spring school —the Institutional and Organizational Economics Academy (IOEA) — which has been contributing to the training of more than 1,000 doctoral and post-doctoral students, among which more than 400 now hold academic positions. Along the same line, I was heavily involved in several European projects in the 2000s and held a part-time professorship position at the European University Institute in Florence (EUI) on global governance issues at the beginning of the 2010s.

I am regularly involved in the organization of scientific workshops and conferences. For instance, during the year 2020-2021, a series of 8 workshops bringing together more than 50 researchers, mainly European and American, was organized (online due to the pandemic) on the challenges raised by digital technology in economic and social governance. In June 2022, a conference bringing together 20 contributors was organized in Florence (in collaboration with the EUI) on the comparative analysis of regulatory governance in the G20 countries. In December 2023, an international workshop brought together 16 contributors in Chantilly (Institut de France) on the regulation of emerging technologies. These three conferences will lead to scientific publications.

Also, in 2023, I was asked to chair the scientific organization of the European Commission’s Annual Research Conference on "European Integration, Institutions and Development". I am also in charge of editing a special issue of the Journal of Comparative Economics based on a selection of papers presented at this conference.

Policy Dialogue

Keen to articulate academic research and decision-making, I have regularly contributed to articulating reflections on public policies or business strategies with the development of research. For example, I directed within the General Planning Commission (now France Stratégie) a working group on “Information Technology, Organization and Economic Performance” in the late 1990s. The projects I was involved in at the EUI also included the training and management of policy dialogue with stakeholders involved in the design of public policies at the European level. For the past 20 years, I also had regular co-operations with the OECD.

In this same spirit, I worked on establishing the “Governance and Regulation” Chair when I joined Dauphine, which has the originality of bringing together corporations, regulatory agencies, and other public authorities (such as the Council of State or the General Council of the Economy) as well as international organizations (notably the OECD).

My various works and commitments have led to my appointment in 2023 as a Research Fellow of the DG EcFin of the European Commission. I manage a research project aimed at analyzing the design and evaluating the performance of institutional reform policies within the Union.

I am regularly involved in expert groups intended to reflect on policies and strategies in terms of regulation. For instance, I have been (or was) involved in: 

• the ‘Network of Economic Regulators’ (NER), coordinated by the OECD (Directorate for Public Governance), from 2015;
• the Scientific Council of the Assessment Committee of the “France Très Haut Débit” plan, hosted by France Stratégie, 2019-2022
• the Expert Committee of the “Internet of Things”, hosted by France Stratégie, 2021-2022
• the Gaia-X Institute, a research consortium articulated with the eponym European association bringing together corporations and public authorities involved in the development of data sharing ecosystems, from 2022.
• the Expert Group on the OECD AI Index set in the context of the OECD.AI Policy Observatory (Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation), from 2022;
• the working group on ‘Regulation’ of the ‘États Généraux de l’Information’, hosted by the CESE, 2023-2024
• The Scientific Council of the “Networks of the Future” of ARCEP (French e-Communication Regulator), from 2023
• the European Metaverse Research Network, coordinating various research initiatives on immersive technologies, from 2023

Education and Training Programs

In matter of education and training, I’m involved in the management of four main programs, essentially at the master and doctoral/post-doctoral levels: 

The master program IREN (Network Industries and Digital Economy) is an international graduate program. Its aim is to train students to allow them to master the principles framing network industries and the digital economy. It targets careers either in the academia, or the industry, or the governments and regulatory agencies, or in consumer-based organizations. It is an partnership involving two universities of the Region Ile-de-France (Paris-Dauphine|PSL and Paris-Saclay) and two engineering schools (Ecole Polytechnique and Télécom-Paris).

The master IREN is a component of a cluster of master programs (Mention) entitled SIREN and made of four programs at the frontier of economics and management and aimed at mastering the digital transformation : IREN, Telecom and Media Management, Management of AI Projects, and Management of Information Systems.

Since 2002, I have been organizing a spring school, the Institutional and Organizational Economic Academy ( http://www.ioea.eu/ ), which brings together around 30 well established scholars and a group of about 50 young researchers (graduates students and post-docs). The event is organized around conferences and interactive workshops and aims to both enable discussions on recent advances in the field, but also to establish collaborations and develop research networks. 

In 2025 we will launch a new Master program, jointly operated by The University Paris-Dauphine and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, entitled "AI and Society". It is aimed at training students both in data sciences and social sciences. This program is a component of the new Paris School of AI.