Economic Literacy, AI, and the Iran Crisis

This week, HEC researchers surface across interviews, debates and long-form features in outlets as different as L'Express, Nouvel Obs, Tradingsat, Madame Figaro, Public Senat, Euronews and WTX News. The coverage helps readers and viewers make sense of issues that range from French local politics, public finance, market reactions and artificial intelligence to the European Union's response to the international crisis in Iran. 

Yann Algan on the return of the mayor-manager

In L'Express, Yann Algan is asked to interpret what French respondents now expect from mayors, published in the magazine's 'Barometre des decideurs' (produced with Viavoice, HEC Paris and BFM Business). The article links municipal expectations to broader anxieties about public finances, local business vitality and the disappearance of everyday services. Algan argues that the long debate around the 2026 budget has made the country's fiscal situation unusually visible, while the decline of shops and small firms is felt directly in many territories. He also connects that local experience to earlier work on the gilets jaunes, saying that the closure of the last shop or cafe was one of the strongest predictors of the movement. The point is important because it grounds political discontent in ordinary local losses rather than in abstract rhetoric. Survey findings are thus turned into a diagnosis of territorial fragility and of why voters increasingly expect mayors to embody competence, budgetary seriousness and economic renewal as much as public order.

Antonin Bergeaud on economic literacy

Antonin Bergeaud appears in Nouvel Obs in a debate with Mathilde Viennot on the French economy. The magazine introduces them as its new economics columnists and frames the exchange around a striking finding: many French people say they do not feel competent on economic questions, even as global trade and industrial tensions make those questions unavoidable. Bergeaud's contribution is to argue that economic culture is also weak among political decision-makers. Drawing on his experience in the United Kingdom, he recalls parliamentarians visiting research labs at the London School of Economics, and suggests that in France economists are too often treated as optional listening. The article notes that Bergeaud now teaches at HEC and serves on the Conseil d'Analyse economique. This gives the exchange a second layer: it is both a debate about the national economy and a reminder that media outlets still rely on academics to rebuild basic economic literacy in public discussion.

Pascal Quiry on reading corporate results

Pascal Quiry appears in Tradingsat in a piece about a familiar market paradox: strong profits do not always lift a share price, and heavy losses do not always sink one. Quiry explains that investors often look past the headline number because net profit can be distorted by exceptional, non-recurring items. Using Renault as an example, the article notes that much of the group's loss came from accounting charges rather than from a collapse in underlying performance. Quiry also stresses that investors pay close attention to what management says about the future: restructuring, taxation, tariffs, order books, acquisitions and the outlook for 2026 or 2027. He adds that net income still matters because it remains a measure of value created over the year, but it is far from sufficient on its own. His contribution clarifies for readers how distinguish between accounting appearances and the signals markets actually prioritize. In practical terms, he gives the audience a better framework for reading earnings season beyond the most dramatic headline figures.

Olivier Sibony on learning and AI

The week's most expansive feature involving an HEC academic is Madame Figaro's conversation with Olivier Sibony and Olivier Babeau on artificial intelligence (coming out this weekend). Sibony is introduced through decision science, which he teaches at HEC Paris, and is placed in a discussion about what remains distinctly human as AI systems improve. The article asks concrete questions: how will people continue to learn, think and choose, and how should children be educated in a world where digital tools answer more and more for them? The piece uses the publication of Sibony and Eric Hazan’s new book, Faut-il encore decider? as its starting point, and frames the discussion around curiosity, judgment and the ability to keep learning. The significance of the appearance is that management scholarship is being translated into a broader reflection on agency, education and everyday decision-making. Rather than treating AI as a narrow business topic, the article makes it a question about habits of mind and the conditions under which human choice still matters.

Alberto Alemanno on institutional overreach in Europe

In Euronews, Alberto Alemanno is brought in as a critic of Ursula von der Leyen's expanding role in foreign policy during the Iran crisis. The article sets out the institutional issue clearly: under EU rules, foreign-policy coordination belongs to other actors, not to the Commission president. Alemanno's intervention gives the piece its sharpest legal edge. The Jean Monnet Professor in European Union Law argues that when von der Leyen calls Gulf leaders to discuss regime change in Iran, she is operating outside her lane and against the treaties. The article then widens the frame, presenting this not as a one-off episode but as part of a broader pattern in which successive crises have allowed von der Leyen to consolidate authority and visibility. Alemanno identifies the constitutional tension beneath the headline.

Vincent Desportes on strategic language

On March 3, Public Senat interviewed General Vincent Desportes as tensions escalated in the Middle East. He was identified as a former director of the Ecole de guerre and professor of strategy at Sciences Po and HEC. Desporte’ intervention is direct: he says France is at war from the moment it decides, in a defensive posture, to take out weapons fired from Iran, and he places the conflict within a wider strategic upheaval that exceeds the region. He also invokes Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union on mutual defense. Whatever readers make of that interpretation, the media role is clear. An HEC-linked academic voice is being used to frame the meaning and scale of a fast-moving crisis.

Alberto Alemanno on backlash over the EU response to Iran

In WTX News, Alberto Alemanno appears in a report focused on the backlash facing Ursula von der Leyen over the European Union's response to Iran. The article presents the controversy as a dispute over who has the authority to speak and act for Europe in a fast-moving crisis. Alemanno's intervention helps frame the issue as one of mandate, institutional legitimacy and the limits of presidential activism inside the EU system. The result is a second international mention in the same week, this time in a more immediate news format, showing HEC expertise feeding into coverage beyond the French press.

Prepared from the weekly media review for March 2-6, 2026.

Algan addresses territorial politics; Bergeaud economic reasoning; Quiry financial interpretation; Sibony human judgment under technological change; Desportes strategic crisis; and Alemanno on the controversial role Ursula von der Leyen is playing in the Iran war.

· Yann Algan in L’Express: local politics cannot be separated from economic realities, and if France wants more people to run for mayor, it needs to value the role accordingly.

· Antonin Bergeaud in Nouvel Obs: France needs stronger economic literacy, including among policymakers, if public debate is to keep pace with today’s geopolitical and industrial upheavals.

· Pascal Quiry in Tradingsat: investors do not read annual results at face value, because guidance, non-recurring items and operating signals often matter more than headline net profit.

· Olivier Sibony in Madame Figaro: in the age of AI, the real challenge is to preserve curiosity, independent thinking and the ability to keep learning.

· Vincent Desportes in Public Sénat: the escalation in the Middle East marks a strategic threshold, with implications that extend beyond the region and force Europe to confront its own security commitments.

· Alberto Alemanno argues that, under EU rules, foreign-policy coordination belongs to other actors, not to the Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.