What was your mission during your internship? I carried out a three-month internship at UNIDO where I worked in a research branch. During the first part of my internship, I had to compile a data set from several different sources. I was in charge of undertaking a literature review, which was carried out in order to select the papers they should use to complete the upcoming annual industrial report. Finally, I had to help perform an econometric analysis of a working paper they wanted to improve. How did you use what your learnt at the TSE? What I learned at TSE helped me in many ways. First of all, the theoretical skills we develop at TSE turned out to be invaluable when undertaking the literature review. Indeed, being able to understand what is at stake in a paper requires some specific math and econometric skills that we acquire at TSE. The classes we have on the software R could have been useful for the data management work they asked me to perform, but unfortunately they used another software. Finally, the official language was English, so the fact that our classes are in English did help me in this matter. How did you get the internship, any advice for students wanting to find one in that field? First of all, as trivial as it seems, applying early does increase your chances of getting in, as you have to compete with hundreds of applicants. Moreover, I would advise students to write quite specific cover letters in order not to make it seem that you wrote a general cover letter that you reused many times. In addition, I think recruiters in this field do care a lot about your language skills and also about your experience in international environments. So, do not forget to highlight them in your CV! Despite the rigid appearance of the application procedures, it may help you to contact people directly to show your interest on top of sending in the application. What was your mission during your internship? I worked as a junior consultant for France Telecom – Orange in the strategy and regulatory affairs in Paris. My job was to study the current model of private copying levies and to create a new one to respond to the forthcoming change in regulation. In a nutshell, a private copying levy is a “tax” that you pay when you buy a device where you can burn or store music or movies on it; it allows you to make private copies of the songs/movies from the original support to device such as CDs, USB, IPod... This tax is redistributed to rights holders (songwriters, singers...) who fight for a high tax against people like France Telecom, Apple or Samsung who want as low a tax as possible. The questions were: Who should pay (consumers, industries...) ? How much per song/ movie? Can we consider copies in the cloud (Dropbox, Google Drive) as private copies and thus relevant to the Levy? This last question is in debate at the European level as consumers are more and more using these services to store their data (and thus their music, movies, etc.). In addition to this, I worked on the economic aspects of net neutrality (Do content providers have to pay for network facilities?) and cloud computing development. How did you use what you learnt at TSE? During this internship I mainly used the incentive and taxation theory that I learnt in TSE. As I was working in the economists’ team, my background in game theory and industrial organization was obviously helpful to interact with my co-workers on other concerns. The part on private copy levy was mainly applied strategy, as a matter of time, we had to go straight to the point and I didn’t use clean economic theory. However, I had to go through many papers on network theory to tackle the issue of net neutrality and cloud computing. How did you get the internship? Do you have any advice for students wanting to find one in that field? I found my internship on the TSE website, in fact, the school has a strong network, so I advise you to use it! Search everywhere and don’t hesitate to send dozens of CVs. Seeing the many things we study at TSE, we sometimes tend to forget that one of these subjects might be very relevant to the internship you’re applying for. If addressed and illustrated in a simple way during your interview, you can demonstrate to the interviewer your knowledge of economic theory as well as your ability to put it into practice in empirical situations, which might be just what you need to get the internship! What was your mission? RBB is a consulting firm that provides expert economic advice on all aspects of competition law. During my stay at RBB, I worked on one cartel case, a merger case and a follow-up damage claims case, at both the European and French levels. More specifically, my work focused mainly on the empirical aspects of the case, handling a lot of data: I helped to analyse data provided by the clients to support our theoretical arguments. How did you use what you learnt in TSE? Competition law is rooted in economic theory and more specifically in the theory of industrial organization. As such, for each case I worked on, I have been asked to apply theoretical concepts and quantitative techniques I learnt in different classes at TSE, obviously in Competition Economics but also in Microeconomics, in Industrial Organization and in Econometrics. As a consultant, you have to work hard and be able to deliver under pressure, two skills I’m sure you have developed while studying successfully in TSE! I think that a school like TSE is the best place to be well prepared to work at RBB. How did you get this internship? Any advice for students wanting to find one in this field? To get my internship, after attending a presentation from one RBB partner at TSE, I simply sent the company my CV along with a cover letter. I then attended one interview in Brussels, completed a short written test, and had the pleasure to learn one month later that I had been selected to be part of RBB for a 6 months internship. My advice to anyone highly motivated in working in that field: be ready for challenges, and go for it! |
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