The decisive event was probably my father's loss of employment when I was eleven years old. I began thinking about the consequences of unemployment: when a family loses income, it spends less, which in turn affects other families and businesses. Very early on, I found myself asking why unemployment exists when economic models seem to predict that markets should naturally move toward equilibrium.

Not really. My interest came first and foremost from human problems. I was concerned about unemployment, but also about social and racial inequality. I wanted to understand these issues and, in my own way, contribute to addressing them. For me, economics was never simply about numbers or equations; it was a way of understanding the challenges people face in their everyday lives.

Very much so. During my studies, I took a topology course that left a lasting impression on me. The professor emphasized a simple idea: before focusing on details, you must understand the overall structure of a problem. That lesson stayed with me throughout my career. I always tried to begin with the big questions and only then look for the tools needed to answer them.

Because economic behaviour is shaped by beliefs, institutions, social norms, and the way people see themselves. Economic models are useful, but they do not explain everything. To understand how people make decisions, we often need insights from psychology, sociology, history, and other disciplines.

Absolutely. My year in India was probably the most important intellectual experience of my life. It taught me that economic development cannot be reduced to capital and labor alone. Beliefs, institutions, traditions, and social interactions matter enormously. I came away convinced that an economy cannot be understood without understanding the people who live within it.

The core insight was that information is not distributed equally among market participants. Sellers often know more than buyers. This asymmetry of information can create significant distortions and prevent markets from functioning as classical economic models predict.

I never expected the idea to have such a broad impact. Yet it turned out to apply to countless areas, from finance and insurance to credit markets and labour economics.

Some situations persist simply because everyone expects them to persist. Collective beliefs influence behaviour, and behaviour reinforces those beliefs. As a result, societies can remain trapped in inefficient outcomes.

My experience in India, particularly my observations of the caste system, led me to think that there is often more than one possible equilibrium. Expectations and social norms can lock societies into patterns that endure for generations.

It reminds us that people are motivated by more than money and material incentives. They also act according to their identity, their sense of belonging, and the social roles with which they identify.

Together, Rachel Kranton and I sought to show that economic behaviour is influenced by how individuals see themselves and by what they believe they ought to be. This perspective helps explain phenomena ranging from workplace motivation and educational achievement to discrimination and collective behaviour.

That economics is fundamentally about people. Markets matter, but they cannot be understood without considering the human beings who make them work.

In the end, all my research—on unemployment, information, social norms, and identity—grew out of the same conviction: to understand economics, we must understand what people think, believe, and experience.

"When I was eleven, my father lost his job."

"First understand the structure of the problem. Then work on the details."

"India changed the way I thought about economics."

"One of the things I got from India was that one should take into account what people were thinking when thinking about equilibrium."

"The seller knows something the buyer does not know."

"Identity affects behaviour."

"Economics begins with people."

George Akerlof's career can be seen as a continuous effort to bring economics closer to reality. From the unemployment that marked his childhood to the development of identity economics later in life, he consistently challenged economists to look beyond abstract models and pay closer attention to human behaviour. By reintroducing beliefs, social norms, and identity into economic analysis, he helped transform the discipline—and reminded us that economics are ultimately created by people, not by equations.

Established in 1933, the Francqui Chairs aim to promote exchanges between universities and highlight academic excellence. Each year, Belgian universities invite professors from other institutions to deliver a series of approximately ten hours of lectures, preceded by an inaugural lecture open to a wider audience. 

This year, KU Leuven has chosen to invite Catherine Guirkinger, a professor of economics at the University of Namur. “What interests me is how arrangements within couples and families are reshaped when the world around them changes, and how these changes affect each of their members.” “Her research, conducted primarily in sub-Saharan Africa but also in Europe, combines field surveys, experiments, and historical data.” 

The Francqui Chair will begin with an inaugural lecture titled “Economic Change and the Family: Adjustment and Resistance,” followed by three more technical courses designed for master’s and doctoral students. Catherine Guirkinger will demonstrate how economic changes, laws, or social norms can influence decisions made within households. “We cannot ignore what happens within the family: all policy is, in a way, filtered through it,” she emphasizes. 

She will draw in particular on her research on divorce, domestic violence, decision-making within couples, and the influence of the economic environment on families. These courses will also provide an opportunity to engage with students already involved in research. “You can go deeper with an audience like this,” Catherine Guirkinger notes. “It’s always very stimulating.”  

This Francqui Chair also builds on an existing relationship between UNamur and KU Leuven. Economists from both universities have collaborated, in particular, on an EOS (Excellence of Science) project, the joint research program of the FNRS and the FWO. Catherine Guirkinger has very fond memories of that experience: “This program led to very fruitful scientific exchanges. This chair is a wonderful opportunity to build on them.” 

Her presence in Leuven will thus provide a new opportunity to exchange ideas, share research conducted in Namur, and further the collaboration between the two institutions. Congratulations to Catherine Guirkinger on this prestigious honor! 

E-government, e-participation, algorithmic governance, and artificial intelligence: the IFIP EGOV International Conference brings together researchers studying digital transformations in the public sector and their implications for citizens and government agencies. UNamur was particularly well represented at the conference this year, with four papers and three posters presented. 

Simon Dechamps, a doctoral student in management at UNamur and a member of the MINDIT center, received the 2026 Best Paper Award for his article “From the Modern Citizen to Citizens as Multiplicities: Citizen-Centricity as a Sign of a New Episteme?”His work examines how government agencies seek to better tailor their digital services to citizens’ needs. 

Based on fourteen interviews conducted within Belgian public administrations, Simon Dechamps demonstrates that it is difficult to speak of the “citizen” as a single, uniform profile. Needs vary greatly from one person to another, and public services must therefore take this diversity into account. His work thus highlights the need to better equip public officials to tailor services to different user profiles.

Lisa Dewulf, a doctoral student at the UNamur School of Management and a member of the MINDIT center and the NaDI institute, received the Best Poster Award for “Do Fictional Representations of AI in Government Relate to Citizens’ Perceptions?” 

Her research focuses on representations of digital technologies in fiction and how these representations can influence our perception of such technologies. Her work is part of the ARC Di-Fic project, which explores, among other things, the use of films, TV series, and video games in digital citizenship education. Her poster presents a typology of representations of artificial intelligence in the government sector based on three dimensions: the level of governance, the type of AI depicted, and its role in the narrative. 

The goal is to better understand how fiction helps shape collective imaginaries surrounding artificial intelligence, as it plays an increasingly significant role in government agencies. The jury particularly praised the practical relevance of the work and its contribution to research on AI and digital government. 

Mahougnon Sedjro Eudes Adiba, a doctoral student at UNamur in the MINDIT–NaDI program, had his article selected as one of the three most innovative research contributions out of nearly 200 submissions. His work focuses on the accessibility of public data and, more specifically, on how citizens search for information on open data portals, such as that of the City of Namur. 

His study analyzes how users actually navigate these platforms. By examining their interaction patterns, the research aims to better understand how citizens go about finding public information, with the ultimate goal of designing portals that are simpler, more intuitive, and better suited to their actual needs. 

With seven presentations, two awards, and one nomination, EGOV 2026 highlights the diversity of research conducted at UNamur on digital transformation, public services, and citizenship. This is also a wonderful recognition for the MINDIT center, to which several of these researchers are affiliated. Congratulations to all the researchers who contributed to the work presented at this year’s conference! 

Juliette Crespin-Boucaud, a microeconomist, works at the intersection of development economics, household economics, and economic history. In 2021, she earned her Ph.D. from the Paris School of Economics. She then pursued several multidisciplinary research projects, first at the London School of Economics and later at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies. This background has shaped her current approach, which emphasizes dialogue with other social sciences, particularly political science, sociology, and demography.

In TranmId, Juliette seeks to understand how social identities (ethnic, national, religious, or linguistic) are formed, acquired, and passed down from one generation to the next. In other words: How do parents’ choices shape their children’s social identities?
The project focuses primarily on marriages, since the choice of a partner influences the possible identities of the children born of that union. Parents’ affiliations, languages, or religions can open up different paths of transmission: a single heritage, multiple combined heritages, or identities that are reshaped over generations.
But transmission does not stop at birth. It continues through very concrete decisions: Which language to speak at home? Which school should you enroll your children in? What priority should be given to a national language, a mother tongue or a language spoken within the family circle, religion, or educational opportunities? Development economics helps connect these individual decisions to broader contexts: available resources, public policies, history, social norms, and family aspirations.

One component of the project, funded by the International Growth Centre, focuses specifically on Mozambique, where parents’ language and educational choices provide a concrete example of this transmission. Indeed, in this country marked by significant linguistic diversity, the choice of an educational program, a language of instruction, or the language spoken at home contributes to the formation of children’s sense of identity. These decisions depend on practical constraints such as available financial resources, the languages known or spoken by parents, and accessible schools, but they are also directly linked to the aspirations parents have for their children: giving them the best opportunities for the future, preserving a family language, or maintaining a cultural identity.

To understand these choices, Juliette observes families’ behaviors as clues. What language do they speak at home? What program (bilingual or not) do they prefer for their children? 
To study how parents shape their children’s “identity background,” the survey focuses on both parents’ practices and their expectations and preferences. To measure the latter, the survey asks parents
to estimate the benefits of both types of programs. For example: Out of 10 children in the bilingual/unilingual program, how many will speak Portuguese by the end of elementary school?
— to consider hypothetical scenarios in which the language spoken at home, the parents’ occupation, and the child’s gender vary. For example: Which program will parents who are farmers and do not speak Portuguese at home prefer for their daughter?
This information is then compared with families’ actual practices: languages spoken at home, programs attended, etc.
 

Ethnic, national, or linguistic identities are not merely categories inherited once and for all. They are also shaped by everyday choices: getting married, speaking a language at home, enrolling a child in school, or choosing one form of learning over another.

Through this research, Juliette Crespin-Boucaud shows that education is not merely a place for acquiring knowledge. It is also a space for transmission, negotiation, and planning for the future. Amid family heritage, national identity, and social opportunities, language thus becomes a common thread for understanding how families shape the identities of future generations.

Outreach and Accessibility: Aline Wilmet - Confluent des Savoirs