Ph.D. position in Economics

Overview

IESEG School of Management and the LEM (UMR 9221), a research unit of the University of Lille, invites applications for a 3-year fully funded PhD position in Economics, with an emphasis on Economic History, Family Economics, and Economic Growth using historical data, starting in September 2026.

About IESEG

• IESEG is AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA accredited and is a member of the “Conférence des Grandes Écoles”.
• IESEG is a member of a CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) research lab: LEM.
• IESEG’s faculty is very diverse with 45 different nationalities represented.

About Lille Economics and Management (LEM)

• LEM is a research unit that comprises the CNRS, associating the University of Lille and IESEG School of Management.
• LEM comprises about 200 researchers and more than 60 doctoral students in economics and management.
• LEM is a young, internationally oriented, and dynamic laboratory with a strong scientific ambition.

PhD project and research environment

We invite applications for a funded PhD position in Economics on the project “Access to Healthcare, Human Capital and Economic Growth in France”. The dissertation will be conducted at the intersection of economic history, health economics, and development economics, with a particular focus on how inequalities in access to medical services shaped demographic behaviour, human capital accumulation, and regional economic trajectories during France’s transition to modern economic growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While historians and economists have documented improvements in health and living standards over this period, we still lack a systematic analysis of how local access to healthcare influenced individual life courses and long-run development.

The PhD candidate will be closely integrated into the broader research agenda of the ANR project “Families, Migration and Long-run Economic Growth in Europe” (FaMiGrowth), which studies the long-term interactions between demographic behaviour, mobility, and economic development. In particular, the candidate will benefit from access to the project’s large-scale genealogical data infrastructure and ongoing collaborations with researchers working on family dynamics, migration, and intergenerational outcomes across Europe. This connection will enable the dissertation to situate the French case within a wider comparative perspective and to explore how health conditions interacted with family structures, mobility decisions, and demographic change over the long run.

Empirically, the PhD candidate will contribute to the construction and analysis of a novel dataset measuring access to healthcare across French municipalities between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, based on historical registers of medical practitioners. Combined with the genealogical data developed within FaMiGrowth, as well as census records and indicators of local economic conditions, these data will allow the candidate to investigate how the diffusion of medical practitioners affected infant mortality, fertility, migration, longevity, and education.

Beyond documenting demographic responses, the dissertation will examine whether early-life exposure to healthcare translated into long-term socioeconomic advantages and contributed to persistent differences in local development. Potential outcomes include human capital formation, occupational trajectories, geographic mobility, and local economic performance across generations. The project will rely on modern empirical methods, including panel data analysis and causal inference techniques, applied to newly digitised historical microdata. This position is ideally suited for students interested in combining economic history, health economics, family economics, and long-run development within an international and collaborative research environment.

Supervision of the PhD candidate and the research teamThe PhD student will be supervised by Profs Thomas Baudin and Adrien Montalbo. The candidate will also benefit from continuous interactions with members of the IFLAME Research Centre and the “Economics and Financial Flows” axis of the LEM research unit.

Qualifications

• A master’s degree in economics or econometrics.
• Sound knowledge of economics and econometrics, especially of economic history, family economics, population economics, political economy and microeconometrics.
• Command of written and spoken English. The research will be carried out in English.
• High level of team spirit and a cooperative attitude.
• Experience with econometric software such as STATA, SAS or R will be an important asset.

Working conditions

The successful candidate is expected to begin their assignment in September 2026. The PhD student will work under the conditions of a research contract for 3 years. Gross salary will be competitive with other European research and academic institutions (2300€/month). The student will be based in Lille and will enjoy additional benefits, most notably access to university facilities, lunch vouchers and social security. They will participate in the structured doctoral student training program run by the LEM and the Doctoral School SESAM.

Application procedure

• their curriculum vitae,
• transcripts of marks at undergraduate (Bachelor’s) and postgraduate (Master’s) level,
• two letters of recommendation from their academic referees (with their contact details),
• a sample of previous research work (e.g. Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis),
• a motivation letter explaining the reasons for which they wish to undertake a PhD in this area.

Dates

• Deadline for sending complete applications: April 15, 2026
• Pre-selection of applications and interviews: April 2026