Ninon Moreau-Kastler (DER SHS) – Winner of a prestigious thesis prize from the Chancellery of the Universities of Paris for her work on international regulations and legal avoidance

We are pleased to congratulate Ninon Moreau-Kastler (class of 2016), alumna of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHS) of École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay, for having received a 2025 solemn thesis prize from the Chancellerie des universités de Paris, in recognition of the excellence of her doctoral research on international regulations, legal avoidance, and the case of extractive industries.

A committed academic path

Ninon Moreau-Kastler defended her thesis entitled “Essays on International Regulations, Legal Avoidance, and the Case of Extractive Industries” on October 8, 2024, within the Centre for Economics of ENS Paris-Saclay (CEPS). Her work advances an interdisciplinary reflection at the crossroads of international economics, public economics, and development, with a particular emphasis on the mechanisms that foster or hinder the effectiveness of international regulations in extractive industries.

A prestigious distinction for high-level research

The solemn thesis prize of the Chancellerie des universités de Paris annually distinguishes doctoral theses from the Paris region whose scientific quality and intellectual scope are particularly outstanding. The 2025 prize thus recognizes Ninon Moreau-Kastler’s significant contributions to understanding international regulations and strategies of legal avoidance in a central yet complex economic sector: that of extractive industries.

Scientific contributions of the thesis

Ninon Moreau-Kastler’s thesis consists of a series of essays that explore both methodological and empirical issues related to the analysis of international flows and the effects of public policies. Among the main contributions:

• An innovative methodological approach, notably a new multiplicative difference-in-differences approach enabling the treatment of proportional effects in public policy evaluation, robust to staggered implementation periods;

• The creation of an original database on “legal havens” and legal opacity, covering 187 jurisdictions and making it possible to measure how certain regulations can be circumvented through opaque legal frameworks;

• An in-depth analysis of trade in regulated minerals, showing the impact of laws (for example, the Dodd-Frank Act) on mineral exports and the avoidance of these trade costs, as well as firms’ avoidance strategies through opaque jurisdictions;

• An assessment of profit-sharing and tax avoidance by extractive multinationals in response to variations in commodity prices.

This work provides valuable conceptual and empirical tools for understanding the trade-offs between international regulation, legal optimization strategies, and economic development, particularly highlighting the role of opaque jurisdictions in these global dynamics.

A collective and promising success

This prize honors not only the individual work of Ninon Moreau-Kastler, but also the vitality and diversity of social science research conducted within the SHS Department and CEPS. The originality of her approach, combining econometric rigor with relevant institutional questions, perfectly illustrates the scientific excellence carried by ENS graduates in strategic disciplinary fields.