Seen one economic model seen them all? To an untrained eye, it’s all theoretical: numbers, zigzags, and arrows. But to NYUAD’s Assistant Professor of Economics, Alaïs Martin-Baillon, every data point represents a human's livelihood, future, hopes, and dreams. This is what drives Martin-Baillon’s work, designing economic models and policies that could help people in a very real way.
Martin-Baillon specializes in macroeconomics and focuses on several research projects examining economic policies' wide-reaching impacts on businesses and people. For one of them, she studies the efficacy of government business subsidies during economic boom and crises. During the pandemic, the French government provided monthly subsidies for every company, regardless of size. Martin-Baillon, from Marseille, saw first-hand how this financial assistance affected businesses and wanted to determine if there were more efficient ways of providing this assistance.
“We could see that this policy affected firms differently,” Martin-Baillon said. “Because if you receive €10,000 and you’re a super small restaurant, it will make a big difference, compared to if you were a huge firm. If you were forced to close, you suffered a lot; if you could still sell your business, you would be less exposed. I wanted to see if I could design a subsidy or tax policy to consider all existing firms as different and have varying needs at different times.”
Martin-Baillon started to take an interest in macroeconomics during the European debt crises of the early 2010s. Back then, she was finishing high school, and that’s all anyone talked about. Today, well into her academic career, Martin-Baillon is deconstructing these crises to understand better how they affected companies and people.
“In my work, I try to show that if you want to design a good policy, you need to take into account that people are affected differently by those policies,” she said.
Current events make great research papers and provide exceptional classroom lesson material. In 2023, Martin-Baillon began her first teaching semester at NYUAD by asking her students to share economy-related words they frequently saw in news reports but didn’t truly understand. The term “inflation” dominated that conversation.
“You hear about inflation all the time, and if you don’t know how to define it, what it means, and the consequences, it’s super hard to understand,” Martin-Baillon said. “Why should you even study it? Why are people talking about inflation all the time? Should we fight it? That’s the main thing they wanted to understand.”
The beauty of NYUAD is that students also expand their professors’ horizons by simply being in class and bringing their diverse cultures, backgrounds, and experiences to the conversation. That’s what Martin-Baillon loves about being on campus. At first, when looking for a job, the 29-year-old said she couldn’t imagine living in Abu Dhabi, so far away from home. However, NYUAD’s atmosphere has been very welcoming, and its international student body has been an incredible source of her growth.
“Teaching is really different here than in Paris,” Martin-Baillon said of her vastly diverse classes. “It’s really impressive. You feel like you need to keep learning, and you really need to take into account other backgrounds, cultures, and experiences to be a better professor and researcher.”
