Loris André

Currently a PhD student at the Paris School of Economics and the "Collège de France", under the supervision of Prof. Katheline Schubert and Prof. Philippe Aghion. I am working on the potential role of innovation in reconciling economic growth and ecosystem conservation. Passionate about economics, my work is not only empirical (with of focus on the Amazonian forest) but also theoretical: I rework economic growth models inspired by the recent work of Pr. Partha Dasgupta. Before starting my thesis, I obtained my engineering degree at the École des Ponts ParisTech. I am now a civil servant in the Corps des ponts, des eaux et des forêts. In parallel to my studies, I have had several professional experiences during the last years: I have mainly worked for the French economic administration. In 2019, I was an intern at the French Embassy in Brazil for the French Treasury. I then joined the Inspection générale des finances to work on public policies such as the financial management of hospitals. More recently, in 2022, I was a research assistant at the Banque de France in the international monetary relations department: my work was on modeling disruptions in global value chains in a context of ecological transition.

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My thesis project

In its 2019 report, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) emphasized that "ensuring environmentally sound technological and social innovation, taking due account of possible rebound effects and investment regimes" is a "critical lever" to combat the deterioration of nature and its vital contributions to people. Until now, few academic contributions have been devoted to the link between economic growth, as a result of innovation, and biodiversity loss. In order to protect biodiversity, several forms of innovation may seem relevant. They can be technological, in the agricultural world or in environmental protection. They can also be social in nature: in production practices or in consumption patterns, for example. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to answer the following question: how, and to what extent, can innovation allow reconciling economic growth and ecosystem conservation? The first empirical part of the thesis consists in understanding the nature of the technological and social innovations that have taken place in the Brazilian Amazon over the last two decades, particularly in the context of the environmental effort of the late 2000s. The objective of this component is to quantitatively measure the contribution of each type of innovation in the drastic reduction of the deforestation rate between 2004 and 2012 (increase in agricultural yields, introduction of agroecological practices, implementation of a remote sensing system of deforestation, creation of conservation units...). The theoretical component aims at refining the endogenous growth models in order to adapt them to the context of ecosystem conservation, to calibrate them, and to formulate public policy recommendations, by defining relevant methods for financing 'green' innovation.