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ESSEC CERGY CAMPUS | February 06, 2025
Pitch Room
Alain Naef, Assistant Professor, Economics
Alain Naef, Assistant Professor, Economics
Alain Naef is an economist focusing on climate finance, international macroeconomics and economic history. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge followed by a postdoc at UC Berkeley. He has taught at Sciences Po, LSE, Warwick, Berkeley and Cambridge. At ESSEC, his teaching focuses on macroeconomics and environment economics. Previously, he was a Senior Economist at the Banque de France and a member of the G20 sustainable finance working group. He is also the cofounder of sustainable macro, a research network exploring sustainable monetary and fiscal policies. His current research interests revolve around fossil fuel companies and their financing.
Presentation Title:
"Divestment From Fossil Fuels: Evidence From Ownership Data"
Abstract. There is a lot of talk about fossil divestment. Is there any action? We built a new database on investor divestment based on ownership data. Instead of focusing on prices, we look at the actual ownership of investors. Our database contains 30 million investor positions in the 312 largest fossil fuel companies. We show that certain religious organizations, universities and public organizations divested from fossil fuel. Looking at all large investors, we find a heterogeneous behavior between short- and long-term divestment. Using a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) and a Vector Error Correction model (VECM) both resulting from behavioral assumptions, we find that commodity price returns are the major drivers of short-term divestment and environmental and climate policy likelihood exhibit a cointegration relationship with long-term divestment. It shows that investors react strongly to fluctuations in the market energy prices in the short term. Only very few investors adjust their fossil fuel holdings in the long term, considering the risk of climate and environmental policy implementation.
Anastasios ELEMES, Associate Professor, Accounting and Management Control
Anastasios ELEMES, Associate Professor, Accounting and Management Control
Anastasios Elemes is associate professor of accounting at the department of Accounting and Management Control. He holds a PhD in Accounting and an MSc in Finance from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. During his PhD, Anastasios spent four months as visiting scholar at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Anastasios' research has been published in leading academic journals, such as Accounting, Organizations and Society, European Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance, and The International Journal of Accounting. His research lies in the areas of auditing, taxation, and international financial reporting. Since 2015 Anastasios has been a CFA Charterholder and member of the CFA France Advocacy team.
Presentation Title:
"The untold story of PwC Europe: the UK patent box and Schäuble’s uneven battle against abusive tax avoidance"
Abstract. Pressure on Belgium's preferential tax regime was mounting when, in April 2013, the UK legally introduced a highly beneficial patent box. A month later, PwC Netherlands entered PwC Europe, a newly-formed German-led alliance between PwC Germany and PwC Austria. The alliance harmonized partner remuneration systems across its members in July 2013. Shortly after, PwC Belgium agreed to join the alliance, legally entered in 2014. In this paper, we examine the implications of PwC Europe's formation for client-firm tax planning in the changing European tax-planning landscape. Using a difference-in-difference research design, we find that multinational corporation (MNC) affiliates audited by alliance members more extensively reorganize their income shifting activities to exploit the UK patent box relative to other MNC affiliates. More detailed tests show that treatment affiliates more actively relocate intangible and financial assets and shift operating and financial income to UK PwC-audited MNC affiliates. We also provide evidence consistent with dividends repatriating from the UK to Germany and Belgium through the Netherlands for treatment affiliates after PwC Europe's formation. Our study is the first to offer direct insights into a major European cross-border tax planning transition of the 2010s, and the importance of advisory firms' internal structures for client-firm tax planning.
Arthur Gautier, Associate Professor, Public & Private Policy
Arthur Gautier, Associate Professor, Public & Private Policy
Arthur Gautier is Associate Professor at ESSEC Business School and Chair Holder of the ESSEC Philanthropy Chair. He was appointed as Associate Dean for Chairs in September 2024. He teaches for the Master in Management and at ESSEC Executive Education. From 2016 to 2021, he was Academic Director of the French Fundraising Certificate.
He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) de Paris (2009) and is an alumni from ESSCA School of Management (2005).
Prof. Gautier's research focuses on philanthropy and more broadly on private initiatives for the common good, from organizational, sociological, psychological and historical perspectives. He studies the emergence and the institutionalization of individual and corporate philanthropy, both as concepts and practices. He is also interested in hybrid philanthropic practices combining multiple institutional logics, such as impact investing, crowdfunding, and foundation-owned companies.
Cristina Alaimo, Associate Professor, Information Systems, Data Science and Operations
Cristina Alaimo, Associate Professor, Information Systems, Data Science and Operations
Cristina Alaimo is Associate Professor at ESSEC Business School, France. Prior to that, she was Assistant Professor at LUISS University, Rome, Italy and Assistant Professor at Surrey Business School, UK. She holds a Ph.D. in Management, Information Systems, and Innovation from LSE – The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. Her research focuses on the innovation brought about by data-based services and their consequences for organizations and society. She is also interested in studying the broader ecosystem of data exchanges in which digital platforms are embedded and how these new platform ecosystems emerge and evolve. Cristina’s work has been published in journals such as Organization Science, Organization Studies, The Information Society, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations. She is a co-author with Jannis Kallinikos of the book “Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy,” The MIT Press (2024). Cristina is Senior Editor of the European Journal of Information Systems and she sits in the Editorial Board of Organization Studies. She is also a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Digital Economy at Surrey Business School, UK.
Presentation Title:
"Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy " coauthored with Kallinikos, J.
Abstract. In this talk, I will build on a few ideas from our book “Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy”. The book traces the social history, economic motives, and technological evolution behind the data revolution and associates it with current economic and organizational transformations. The functional logic of traditional markets and organizations differs from the rules of data production, which consists prevalently of endless exchanges and interactions. I will examine the functions that data perform in contemporary institutional contexts in some detail and link these functions to the diffusion of platforms and ecosystems as they become the forms of organizing that mark our time.
Elizabeth Heichler, Editorial Director, Magazine MIT Sloan Management Review
Elizabeth Heichler, Editorial Director, Magazine MIT Sloan Management Review
Presentation Title:
"How to write for managers: Translating research for impact on practice."
Emiliano Traversi, Associate Professor, Information Systems, Data Analytics & Operations
Emiliano Traversi, Associate Professor, Information Systems, Data Analytics & Operations
Emiliano Traversi is Associate Professor in the Information Systems, Decision Sciences & Statistics department. He received his Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Bologna. Prior to joining ESSEC Business School, he was a Full Professor with LIRMM, Université de Montpellier, France. His research interests include Mathematical Optimization, Decomposition methods, Quantum Computing, Machine Learning and Autonomous systems.
Presentation Title: “Machine Learning Guided Optimization for Demand Responsive Transport Systems”
Abstract. Most of the time, objective functions used for solving static combinatorial optimization problems cannot deal efficiently with their real-time counterparts. It is notably the case of Shared Mobility Systems where the dispatching framework must adapt itself dynamically to the demand. More precisely, in the context of Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) services, various objective functions have been proposed in the literature to optimize the vehicles routes. However, these objective functions are limited in practice because they discard the dynamic evolution of the demand. To overcome such a limitation, we propose a Machine Learning Guided Optimization methodology to build a new objective function based on simulations and historical data. This way, we are able to take the demand’s dynamic evolution into account. We also present how to design the main components of the proposed framework to fit a DRT application: data generation and evaluation, training process and model optimization. We show the efficiency of our proposed methodology on real-world instances, obtained in a collaboration with Padam Mobility, an international company developing Shared Mobility System
Karoline Strauss, Professor, Management
Karoline Strauss, Professor, Management
Karoline Strauss teaches Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management across different programs at ESSEC. Previously she was an Associate Professor at Warwick Business School, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Sheffield.
Karoline’s research interests broadly focus on individuals’ relationship with the future. Her research on future work selves explores how individuals create the future in their mind and will, and how this helps them in managing their career. In her research on proactive behavior she investigates individuals’ attempts to influence their own future, and the future of their organization, such as by contributing to innovation or sustainability. She currently leads a project on the well-being consequences of proactive behavior, funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche. Karoline’s work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Management, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and Human Resource Management.
Karoline is representative-at-large at the Academy of Management’s Managerial and Organizational Cognition division and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Management, the British Journal of Management, and the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. She is an academic member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.
Presentation Title:
"Complementarity in Future Selves: How Networks of Aspirations Shape Proactive Career Behavior" coauthored with Julija Mell, Frederik Anseel, Annemijn Loermans and David Sluss
Abstract. When thinking about their career, individuals rarely hold a single, cohesive vision of their future selves. Instead, they may imagine a wide range of possibilities and have different aspirations for who they might become. This research explores how future self complementarity – the extent to which the aspirations a person has for their future self are mutually reinforcing – affects their ability to manage their career.
We conceptualize the future self as a network of interconnected cognitive representations and propose that complementarity within this network enhances motivation by amplifying the energizing effects of these future-oriented representations. Across five studies, we examine this idea and develop a network-based measure of future self complementarity.
Our findings show that individuals with highly complementary future selves are more likely to engage in proactive career behavior (e.g., taking initiative to develop skills). These effects are driven by increased vitality—feeling energized and motivated to act. For example, in a longitudinal study of employees across 11 organizations, we found that complementarity indirectly boosted proactive career behavior by enhancing vitality.
This research challenges traditional assumptions that a clear and singular career vision is essential for success. Instead, it highlights the value of embracing a flexible, interconnected view of the future. By identifying complementarity as a critical factor and providing tools to measure it, we contribute to career development, identity, and organizational behavior research, with implications for both theory and practice.
Li Han, Associate Professor, Economics
Li Han, Associate Professor, Economics
Li Han is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at ESSEC Business School, Asia-Pacific Campus. Prior to joining ESSEC, she held the same position at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from 2016. Her research primarily focuses on the intersection of development economics and political economy, with a particular emphasis on how politics and policies in autocracies shape social mobility domestically and generate international repercussions. While her initial regional expertise was in China, she has broadened her research scope to include Africa and South Asia. Her work has been published in prestigious journals such as The Economic Journal, The Journal of Public Economics, and The Journal of Development Economics.
Presentation Title:
"The Media and Foreign Powers: Does Market Access Matter for News Reporting?" coauthored with Heng Chen.
Abstract. Does news media’s coverage of autocracies hinge on their relation- ship with those regimes? Exploiting a large-scale media crackdown in May 2019 in China, in which multiple influential UK- and US-based news sites were blocked, we find that news outlets adopted a more negative tone in coverage of China and reported more frequently on sensitive topics such as human rights after being blocked, compared to those with no access change. Such effects are absent in news on economic topics and opinion articles. This set of findings can be organized by the interpretation that the media censored themselves less after losing access. We also investigate various other potential mechanisms that might contribute to the observed changes, such as the reallocation of journalistic resources and shifts in readership composition.
Maren Mickeler, Assistant Professor, Management
Maren Mickeler, Assistant Professor, Management
Dr. Mickeler’s background is in business administration. She holds a PhD from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, an MA from the University of Hamburg, and a BSc from the University of Hohenheim. After graduating, she worked at two multinational media corporations for more than two years. Her research focuses on employee collaboration and decision making. She is a quantitative researcher relying mainly on experiments - field, lab and online - and large scale datasets to study her research questions.
Roberto Renò, Professor, Information Systems, Data Science and Operations
Roberto Renò, Professor, Information Systems, Data Science and Operations
Roberto Renò is Professor at the IDO Department (Information Systems, Data Analytics and Operations) at ESSEC Business School.
Formerly, he was Visiting Professor at Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Senior Fellow at Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin; Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence; Full Professor at the University of Verona; Associate and Assistant Professor at the University of Siena, Visiting Professor at LUISS, Rome and Visiting Professor IMT, Lucca.
He holds a PhD in Financial Mathematics at Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and a Master in Physics at the University of Pisa.
His research focuses on various aspects of econometrics and finance, with specific contributions to asset pricing, high frequency financial econometrics, nonparametric statistics.
He published research papers on leading finance, economics, econometrics, mathematics and physics jour
Presentation Title:
"Pure momentum", coauthored with Roméo Tédongap and Xinyi Zhang
Abstract. Momentum, one of the strongest and most comprehensively studied trading strategies, bets on the persistence of past trend. The trend is traditionally measured by the cumulative past returns of individual stocks. However, the historical cumulative return can be a noisy proxy for the past trend, especially for those stocks with high volatility. We apply a test to detect the presence of drift in the stock returns in the formation period eliminating the impact of volatility. We show that the profit of standard momentum is mainly attributable to holding return of stocks with a non-negligible drift. We also discover that our pure momentum strategy, which is based on the strength of the drift, outperforms the traditional momentum strategy with stronger and more persistent holding returns. Moreover, the transaction cost of pure momentum is much lower than that of traditional momentum.
Robert Stoumbos, Associate Professor, Accounting and Management Control
Robert Stoumbos, Associate Professor, Accounting and Management Control
Robert Stoumbos is a faculty member in the Department of Accounting and Management Control at ESSEC Business School, where he has held the Chair of Excellence in Financial Reporting since 2022. From 2017 to 2022, he was an Assistant Professor at Columbia Business School in New York. His expertise encompasses the use of accounting in capital markets, the impact of behavioral considerations on financial reporting, and the historical landscape of financial accounting before regulatory intervention. Robert earned his Ph.D. from Yale University and worked as a Certified Public Accountant at Ernst & Young prior to his academic career.
Presentation Title:
"Learning to Disclose: Disclosure Dynamics in the 1890s Streetcar Industry", coauthored with Thomas Bourveau and Matthias Breuer
Abstract. We study the influence of bounded rationality on companies’ disclosure to investors in new industries. Using a historical example of a new industry, we document that several companies initially withheld their earnings, despite external capital needs and investor information demands. However, almost all these companies started disclosing shortly thereafter. Interpreted through the lens of a disclosure model featuring level-k thinking, these patterns suggest that limited strategic thinking of some companies contributed to the initial failure to disclose, while feedback and learning over time contributed to the quick convergence to an equilibrium of (almost) full disclosure in the new industry.
Srividya Jandhyala, Associate Professor, Management
Srividya Jandhyala, Associate Professor, Management
Srividya Jandhyala is an Associate Professor at ESSEC Business School. She was previously an Assistant Professor at George Washington University in Washington DC, and a fellow and visiting scholar at Princeton University.
Srividya studies the relationship between firms and governments, with a particular focus on conflicts between the two. Her inter-disciplinary research has been published in international peer-reviewed journals including Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and World Development.
She holds a Ph.D. from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a B.Tech. from the University of Madras. At ESSEC, she teach courses on strategy and international business in the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs.
Presentation Title:
"Geopolitical Liability of Foreignness and Global Strategy"
Abstract. We introduce the geopolitical liability of foreignness (LOF) whereby a multinational firm is perceived unfavorably by host country stakeholders because its home country is a geopolitical rival. To reshape perceptions of national origin, the firm can relocate control rights outside of the home country by: (a) moving its headquarters and senior leadership to a friendly country, (b) transferring ownership and control of host country operations to a local partner, (c) shifting the supply chain to the host market. Using a “lab in the field” experimental design, and focusing on customer behavior, we find that only the first two of these relocation strategies help overcome geopolitical LOF as they effectively decrease potential customers’ identification of the firm with its home country and increase their willingness to buy the firm’s products.
Victor Saint Jean, Assistant Professor, Finance
Victor Saint Jean, Assistant Professor, Finance
Victor Saint Jean is Assistant Professor of Finance. He is a financial economist interested in Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance. He holds a PhD in Economics from Sciences Po. His research has been presented at major finance conferences and has received multiple awards, including the "Brattle Group PhD Candidate Award for Outstanding Research" (WFA 2023).
Presentation Title:
"NGO Activism: Exposure vs Influence" coauthored with Michele Fioretti and Simon C. Smith.
Abstract. We analyze the timing of NGO campaigns to shed light on NGOs’ objectives and how their strategies evolve over time. Using data from 2,500 campaigns, we find that NGOs are six times more likely to launch campaigns on their target’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) date. Although this strategy increases media exposure and stakeholder scrutiny, resulting in consumer boycotts and related shareholder proposals at the following AGM of the targeted firm, it has no impact on current AGM votes. As NGOs build reputational capital, they adjust their timing to influence AGM votes, revealing the trade-offs they face to drive corporate change.
Xavier Lambin, Assistant Professor, Economics
Xavier Lambin, Assistant Professor, Economics
Xavier Lambin is an engineer from École Polytechnique and École des Mines. After two years of strategy consulting, he completed a PhD in Industrial Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics. He then became an assistant professor at Grenoble Ecole de Management, before joining ESSEC in 2021. His research focuses on market design for the digital economy and electricity markets. His techniques are both theoretical and empirical.
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