Antonin Bergeaud (X2010), winner of the 2025 Best Young Economist Award

Antonin Bergeaud (X2010) is the winner of the2025 Best Young Economist Award , awarded each year by a jury made up of representatives from the newspaper Le Monde and the Cercle des économistes, to French economists under the age of 41 whose work combines recognized expertise and active participation in public debate.

Antonin Bergeaud discovered applied economic research during an internship at the Bank of France. He continued in this vein with a specialized Master's degree in “Forecasting and Economic Policy” at ENSAE Paris, a founding member of the Institut Politique de Paris like École Polytechnique, and followed this up with a thesis on the links between innovation and inequality at the London School of Economics, where he obtained his PhD in 2018.

He got back  to the Bank of France  as a research economist. His work focuses on the levers that can effectively stimulate innovation and productivity, with particular attention to the impact of public research funding policies.

In 2022, he joined the faculty of HEC Paris, where he is an associate professor, and focuses on the long-term determinants of economic growth. He also studies the effects of technological change, particularly AI, on inequality and the future of work.

Faced with the fact that European productivity and growth have been lagging behind that of the United States for several years, as confirmed by the report submitted in September 2024 by Mario Draghi, former ECB President, to the President of the European Commission, Antonin Bergeaud calls for a proactive European industrial and innovation policy, notably through investment in new technologies.

Antonin Bergeaud's work has appeared in leading international economic journals (American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Economic Journal). He is also co-author of the book Le bel avenir de la croissance : Leçons du XXe siècle pour le futur (The bright future of growth : Lessons from the 20th century for tomorrow). He contributed to the collective work The Economics of Creative Destruction.

Created in 2000 by the newspaper Le Monde and the Cercle des économistes, the Best Young Economist Award has been awarded to Thomas Piketty, Nobel Prize winner Esther Duflot, David Thesmar, Yann Algan, Augustin Landier and Sylvia Cagé.