List of numbers
N°47
Back to sanity
01 May 2013
Editorial
At a time of economic stagnation in the eurozone, infrastructure projects are often cited as a means of boosting activity. Variances has therefore decided to devote its special report to this theme, analyzing the impact of infrastructure spending on growth, its pricing and the way it is financed. In this field, at the crossroads of microeconomics and macroeconomics, we are right at the heart of ENSAE's expertise.
This is also the case for this issue's focus, which provides us with an opportunity to shed light on one of the key professions in finance, yet one that is little-known in our country, which has neither a strong financial culture nor a large base of pension funds managed over the very long term, even if the case of the Retraite Additionnelle de la Fonction Publique, described in this focus, contradicts this observation. Asset management is a profession that combines strategic thinking, macroeconomic forecasts, company analysis and quantitative techniques designed to allocate portfolio risk efficiently and control it.
It's clear that, while the School and the Alumni Association consider it important to support the Big Data phenomenon, so that our training is fully recognized in these activities whose development will benefit, let's be sure, from our skills in statistics, we certainly haven't forgotten our roots as economists. And if anyone doubted this, the careers of two eminent Directors, Jean-Luc Tavernier, current Director General of INSEE, who headlines this issue, and Clotilde L'Angevin, Secretary General of the Paris Club, profiled in our "Alumni" section, are a reminder of just how much ENSAE is a training ground of excellence for senior civil servants fully involved in the definition and evaluation of economic policies.
Our "Vie des chiffres" section, devoted to the profiling of groups in company statistics, underlines how a question as simple in appearance as, for example, the share of SMEs in French exports, can be subject to debate. One of the lessons of the work of Alain Desrosières, a great specialist in official statistics who has just passed away and who had a profound impact on his colleagues at INSEE, is precisely that statistics, far from being neutral and objective, transform and "perforate" the phenomena observed, and are inseparable from the conditions under which they are measured.
Of course, ENSAE is fully aware of the need to accompany the figures with a reading grid, a sense of perspective. In these troubled times, however, when irrationality tends to dominate our society's debates, our role is crucial: to bring our capacity for dispassionate analysis of economic and social issues to bear, so as to help provide concrete answers; our little stones in the edifice of "better living together"...
Eric Tazé-Bernard (1978)
Editor in chief
This is also the case for this issue's focus, which provides us with an opportunity to shed light on one of the key professions in finance, yet one that is little-known in our country, which has neither a strong financial culture nor a large base of pension funds managed over the very long term, even if the case of the Retraite Additionnelle de la Fonction Publique, described in this focus, contradicts this observation. Asset management is a profession that combines strategic thinking, macroeconomic forecasts, company analysis and quantitative techniques designed to allocate portfolio risk efficiently and control it.
It's clear that, while the School and the Alumni Association consider it important to support the Big Data phenomenon, so that our training is fully recognized in these activities whose development will benefit, let's be sure, from our skills in statistics, we certainly haven't forgotten our roots as economists. And if anyone doubted this, the careers of two eminent Directors, Jean-Luc Tavernier, current Director General of INSEE, who headlines this issue, and Clotilde L'Angevin, Secretary General of the Paris Club, profiled in our "Alumni" section, are a reminder of just how much ENSAE is a training ground of excellence for senior civil servants fully involved in the definition and evaluation of economic policies.
Our "Vie des chiffres" section, devoted to the profiling of groups in company statistics, underlines how a question as simple in appearance as, for example, the share of SMEs in French exports, can be subject to debate. One of the lessons of the work of Alain Desrosières, a great specialist in official statistics who has just passed away and who had a profound impact on his colleagues at INSEE, is precisely that statistics, far from being neutral and objective, transform and "perforate" the phenomena observed, and are inseparable from the conditions under which they are measured.
Of course, ENSAE is fully aware of the need to accompany the figures with a reading grid, a sense of perspective. In these troubled times, however, when irrationality tends to dominate our society's debates, our role is crucial: to bring our capacity for dispassionate analysis of economic and social issues to bear, so as to help provide concrete answers; our little stones in the edifice of "better living together"...
Eric Tazé-Bernard (1978)
Editor in chief
