Doctoral program

A world-class international doctoral program, training the brightest minds.

First year

The "Doctoral track" (Master 2 ETE) allows students to acquire a thorough and advanced general training in economic theory (micro, macro and econometrics) before choosing a specific area of research. During this first year, students are also given training in research techniques and work one-on-one with a faculty advisor to complete a master’s thesis that will be assessed by a board of professors.

Second year

At the end of the first year, students are admitted in the second year Advanced Research degree in Economics (MRes in Economics) on the basis of their results (courses and research work) and embark on a final year of advanced, specialized courses. Students should select 7 course topics among a list of advanced specialized courses and attend an annual research workshop (members meet on a regular basis during the year).
This intensive training should provide PhD students with a strong foundation for the writing of their thesis and for their future research career. An advisor and another faculty member assist students in the design of their plan of studies. During the second year, students choose their field(s) of specialization : 

  • Behavioral and Experimental Economics
  • Econometrics and Empirical Economics
  • Economics Theory
  • Finance
  • Industrial Organization
  • Macroeconomics
  • Public Policy and Applied Economics

At the end of this second year, students must present some original research work (a preliminary paper) to a jury of faculty members.

Thesis years

The two or three following years are devoted to full-time research and to writing the dissertation. Students are given the opportunity to mature and develop their economist’s intuition and techniques. PhD students participate in the life of academic groups, including seminars. They also present their research work in junior seminars and international conferences and are encouraged to participate in specialized summer schools.

Job Market

Our PhD program is designed to prepare our candidates for the International Job Market. 
 

To find out about application deadlines please see our Admissions section.

Applications must be made online on the TSE platform eCandidatures. Any application submitted outside of the dates of the recruitment campaigns will not be reviewed.

 

Our ambition is to keep attracting the best students in the world. Therefore, we offer financial help for our future PhD students.

Some scholarships and grants are available at the Master 2 level: https://www.tse-fr.eu/admissions

Once the students graduate from the Master 2 ETE and continue in the PhD program, the doctoral school makes sure that they receive funding. Some positions of teaching assistant and research assistant are also available.

It usually takes 5 years for students to complete their thesis.

 

Students testimonies

Some videos are available on the platform Youtube

Christopher Sandmann, PhD student

Basile Dubois, PhD student 


"TSE is a very good environment for research. Besides the faculty helping students, much administrative hassle is kept away from students to be able to better focus. In any given week there are more research seminars than one can even attend, so one is exposed to many different ideas. Throughout my time at TSE I enjoyed substantial financial support, both for my living expenses as well as for accessing data"

Markus Gebauer, Assistant Professor of Economics (International College of Economics and Finance, National Research University - Higher School of Economics Moscow, Russia)


"TSE is an amazing place for students who want to devote themselves into research. The professors here are very productive and nice. Their love to economics is so contagious. There are so many conferences, seminars, and workshops in diversified areas that could feed your interests and tastes. The quality and quantity of those meetings are fabulous. Overall, our PhD program in terms of its research environment is comparable to the top-ten programs in the US. The life at Toulouse is also very rewarding. You would meet many interesting persons here. International students' background are diversified and they come from five continents. I love here so much and miss the people I met here. You would never regret if you choose to come to TSE."

Nina Yin, Assistant Professor (China Center for Human Capital and Labor Market Research, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China)


"Learning how to become a researcher is not an easy task and TSE's structure in thematic groups played an important part in helping me develop research skills. Every week, we had a macro seminar with external speakers, a macro workshop for PhD students to present their work and a macro reading group where we discussed recently published papers !
When you present your work, comments from professors and fellow students can be tough to hear, but that's how make progress and learn how not to cut corners.
Overall, the environment at TSE showed me a passion for intellectual challenges that was contagious. I felt encouraged to play my part and contribute, as an economic researcher, to a better understanding of the forces driving our economic system."

François de Soyres, Economist (World Bank)


"TSE gave me an outstanding training in econometrics which was crucial for the beginning of my career. I believe that the scientific environment at TSE is comparable to the best economics departments in the world. Just look at the amount and quality of seminars, workshops, and conferences hosted at TSE each year and compare it to any other top economics department. There are more events than you can digest!"

Andrii Babii, Assistant professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill


"I enjoyed the diversity and academic environment here. Students and researchers are coming from all over the world and doing research in various fields, each contributing in a unique way to the diverse culture here. The research environment is of first grand; each year, top researchers around the world visit and give talks at Toulouse, giving us plenty of opportunities to be exposed to the research frontier. The researchers/advisors are really great economists and patient teachers; discussions on our work are usually deep and focusing on the big picture and economic applications, which I find are the most important part of economics research. Of course, the city is truly beautiful!

Some deals are too good to be true but TSE defies this adage. One gets to live in a great city and have access to one of the best economics departments. TSE has a big PHD program with roughly 20 incoming students each year, which makes you feel like a part of the community. I was part of the Macro group and learned a lot through interactions with the faculty members and other students. And this interaction was not just limited to internal members as the PhD students interact a lot with the visiting seminar speakers (and there are a lot of them at TSE!!).
 

In terms of the timeline, one spends the first two years on coursework. The core courses are interesting and give a good foundation for research, both in terms of material covered as well as to develop research agenda. I got good support from my advisor as well as other faculty members to keep my work on track throughout the PhD. For the job market, TSE has a professional team of people, comprising of staff members and faculty, who help you throughout the job market season. The hard work that TSE puts in to prepare its students is amply reflected in the placements!!"

Shekhar Tomar, Research Officer, Reserve bank of India


"I did my Ph.D. at TSE from 2011 until 2016 (plus a strong M1 a year prior). Coming from Peru to Europe for the first time, a lot was new, exciting, and different. Language-wise, for instance, classes were in English, while daily life was in French. To make this harder, coursework at TSE is tough and exams are intense. However, I can say with the benefit of hindsight, that such level of rigor makes TSE alumni well equipped to face the challenges of a dynamic world. At TSE, I learned to always stay curious, and to study seriously and committed to the subject at hand. After the Ph.D. I came to the U.S. to work in consulting. My adviser and other faculty members were always supportive of my choice and were instrumental for me finding a job in Washington, D.C. There, I have confirmed that TSE enjoys an outstanding reputation in economics, especially in IO. All in all, my years in Toulouse were some of the best in my life, I am deeply thankful to the school, the administrative staff, the faculty, and my friends!"

Rodrigo Montes, Senior Economist, Compass Lexecon

The TSE Doctoral School is a member of a European network of doctoral schools, ENTER (European Network for Training in Economic Research), which includes the following universities:  
- Universitat Autonoma Barcelona
- Free University of Brussels
- University of Mannheim
- University of Stockholm
- Tilburg University
- Toulouse School of Economics
- University College London
- Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Scheme

Doctoral students who enrol in the ENTER programme spend between three months to a year in one or two of the network institutions where they benefit from exactly the same status as the other doctoral students. Depending on their situation, they may either attend classes or seminars, or work on their thesis under the supervision of one of the university’s professors. They are thus in contact with a wider teaching body and a more diverse range of research themes. They can also develop productive professional relationships with other students and thus become truly European economists.
The network schedules a conference which rotates every year to a different member university and encourages doctoral students to visit and stay at one (or several) of the universities in the network

For more information, go to www.enter-network.org

2023-2024 PhD candidates

Name

Referees

Fields of Interest

Lisa BOTBOL

  • Housing
  • Industrial organization

Luisa CARRER

  • Public Economics
  • Gender Economics
  • Political Economy

Anaïs FABRE

  • Labor
  • Econometrics
  • Empirical Industrial Organization

Oscar Eduardo FENTANES TELLEZ

  • Macroeconomics
  • Behavior
  • Institutions and Development

Jonas GATHEN

  • Macroeconomics
  • Macro Development 
  • Development
  • Political Economy

Gökçe Gökkoca

  • Empirical Industrial Organization
  • Health Economics

Johanna ISMAN

  • Environmental Economics
  • Industrial Organization

Oscar JARA RAMIREZ

  • Empirical Industrial Organization
  • Applied Microeconomics
  • Competition Policy

Chanwoo KIM

  • Macroeconomics
  • Labor Economics
  • Public Economics

Federica LO POLITO

  • Political Economy
  • Applied Microeconomics
  • Economics of Migration
  • Culture Economics

Moritz LOEWENFELD

  • Behavioral and Experimental Economics
  • Theory 

Nicolas MARTINEZ FRANCO

  • Industrial organization
  • Urban Economics

Sébastien MONTPETIT

  • Labor and Family Economics
  • Public Economics

Esteban MUNOZ SOBRADO

  • Public Economics
  • Behavioral Economics

Emil PALIKOT

Currently post-doc at Stanford GSB

  • Industrial Organization
  • Economics of Digitization
  • Machine Learning and Causal Inference

Post-Docs at TSE

Name

Referees

Fields of Interest

Peter BAYER 

  • Microeconomics
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Theory

Hakan OZYILMAZ

  • Behavioral and Experimental Economics
  • Household Finance

 

 

TSE PhD placements

2023

  • Hippolyte Boucher: Airbus, Marseille
  • Tim Ederer: Tepper Business School, Carnegie Mellon University (Economics), preceded by a one-year Post-Doc at the Becker-Friedmann Institute, University of Chicago
  • Luise Eisfeld: HEC Lausanne (Finance)
  • Hiyu Hou: Renmin University, Beijing
  • Dakang Huang: Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFFE), Chengdu, China
  • Antoine Jacquet: Post Doc at Science-Po, Paris, France (2 years)
  • Max Lesellier: Université de Montréal
  • Yaxin Li: Renmin University, Beijing
  • Gosia Majewska: ESSEC Business School, Paris (Economics)
  • José Munoz: Analysis Group, Brussels
  • Peter Neis: Post Doc at CERDI, Clermont Ferrand University (2 years)
  • Tuuli Vanhapelto: Adam Smith Business School, Glasgow (Economics)
  • Philipp Wangner: Mannheim University, preceded by a one-year Post-Doc at Columbia University
  • Li Yu: Liaoning University, Shenyang, China
  • Ling Zhou: Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (after a two-years Post-Doc)

2022

  • Baha Alae - Oxford University,  Sociology Dep. (Post Doc, 3 years) 
  • Carrillo Paloma - International Labor Organization
  • Ferreira Alipio - 1 year postdoc at JPAL-LAC (Rio de Janeiro) and then Southern Methodist University (AP)
  • Gaillard Alexandre - 1 year post-doc at Princeton and then Brown University (AP)
  • Lucke Friedrich - Joint Research Center (JRC), European Commission, Brussels
  • Mrowiec Filip - Cornerstone (New York)
  • Ruiz Celia - Compass Lexecon
  • Shreeti Vatsala - Bank of International Settlments
  • Stipanicic Fernando - 1 year postdoc at Berkeley and then Oslo (AP)
  • Yan Jun - Xiamen University (AP)
  • Zhang Yifei - Peking University, HSBC Business School (AP)

2021

  • Bonneton Nicolas - University of Manheim Assistant Professor 
  • Bregolin Jacopo - University of Liverpool Assistant Professor
  • Bruneel Christophe - KU Leuven Assistant Professor
  • De Souza Bueno Matheus - OECD
  • Duran-Franch Joana - Postdoc at Columbia 1 year 
  • Enrich Moya Jacint - Postdoc at Pompeu Fabra - 3 years 
  • Gaillac Christophe - Postdoc Nuffield College – 3 years
  • Gonnot Jérôme - Postdoc European University Institute – 2 years
  • Khainar Kunal - Bank of England 
  • Lefez Willy - Postdoc Berlin School of Economics - 4 years
  • Pébereau Charles - Post doc at Stanford - 3 years
  • Pollinger Stefan - Sciences Po Paris Assistant Professor
  • Remmy Kevin - Postdoc at University of Mannheim - 5 years 
  • Yang Yang - Nanjing University Assistant Professor 
  • Zerecero Miguel - UC Irvine Assistant Professor
  • Zhou Ling - Postdoc University of Padova - 2 years 

2020

  • Miren Azkarate-Askasua - Post-doctorate for one year at European University Institute (EUI), then Assistant Professor (University of Mannheim)
  • Hussein Bidawi -  International Monetary Fund
  • Filippo D'Arcangelo - OECD
  • Hugues Dastarac - Banque de France
  • Alberto Grillo - Post doctorate at Aix-Marseille School of Economics
  • Elia Lapenta - Assistant Professor(CREST)
  • Emil Palikot - Post doctorate at Stanford
  • Christopher Sandmann - Post doctorate for one year at Princeton then Assistant Professor à LSE
  • Roberto Sarkisian - Assistant Professor (University of Rome Tor Vergata)
  • Peter Wikman - Post doctorate at Toulouse School of Economics 
  • Yuting Yang - Assistant Professor (University of New Mexico)
  • Jiakun Zheng - Assistant Professor (Renmin University)
  • Vessela  Daskalova - Assistant Professor  (UC Dublin)