On October 25, 2016, Prof. François Lévêque from Mines ParisTech, gave a report entitled “Nuclear power economics: innovation, competitiveness and safety” at CEEP-BIT. The report was hosted by associate professor Ke Wang, some other teachers and students attended the report.
　　In this report, Prof. reported the recent developments of his research program on nuclear power economics. In the first part, he discussed the role of the organization of the nuclear industry in the so-called “cost increase curse”, based on two empirical analyses of the evolution of the construction costs of nuclear reactors in France, the United-States, and other OECD countries. The second part of the presentation tackles the assessment of nuclear safety, and questions how policy-makers should take the nuclear risks into account in their policy decisions, especially in the wake of the Fukushima-Daiichi accident.

　　François Lévêque is Professor of economics at Mines ParisTech, and part-time professor at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies (European University Institute, Florence School of Regulation). He has been teaching industrial economics at the École des mines since 1996, where he created in 1999 a new major in law and economics. He previously taught natural resources economics in Mines ParisTech, environmental economics at EHESS and Pavia University, and EU Competition Law at the Boalt Law School in UC Berkeley (2002-2007). Debuting his academic activity on forest economics, Professor Lévêque’s research agenda progressively shifted towards intellectual property rights, environmental policy and regulation, and competition law enforcement. Most recently, Professor Lévêque has been leading a research program on nuclear power economics, and initiated in 2016 a joint research chair on the economics of natural gas. Professor Lévêque published many papers in peer-reviewed journals and published several reference textbooks on regulation, intellectual property rights and competition policy. In addition to his research and teaching interests, Professor Lévêque exerts some consulting activities in the areas of antitrust, intellectual property rights and network regulation. He has been regularly commissioned by the French government, the OECD and the European Commission to participate to advisory committees.

　　After this lecture, teachers and students from CEEP-BIT had a heated discussion with Prof. Li and had a picture taken together.