I teach economics at the Toulouse School of Economics and have lived in the centre of the city of Toulouse in France since 2000. I was Director from 2012 to 2021 of the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST). In the academic year 2021-22 I am on sabbatical leave at the University of Oxford and in the first year of a Two-Year Fellowship at All Souls College.
I did undergraduate and doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, where I was a Fellow of All Souls College, then taught at the University of Cambridge where I was a Fellow of Churchill College. I have also held part-time teaching positions at the College of Europe in Bruges and at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.
My current research lies in three areas of microeconomics: industrial organization and competition policy; the economics of networks and the digital society; and behavioral economics (especially the integration of evolutionary biology and anthropology with an understanding of the development of economic institutions in the very long run). I am working on a book under contract to Princeton University Press entitled The Origins of Enchantment: How Religions Compete.
I am a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, and of the European Economic Association. I was formerly a member of the Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy at DG-Competition of the European Commission and a member of the Scientific Council of the think-tank BRUEGEL. Since 2005 I have been an almost annual visitor at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
My literary agent is Catherine Clarke at Felicity Bryan in Oxford. You can find details of my books here.