The Human Side of Economics

Don’t sleep on the impact of Stevens School of Business assistant professor Justine Hervé’s research into applied microeconomics and labor economics.

Or maybe that’s exactly what should be done. One of her working papers, “Food coma is real: The effect of post-meal fatigue on adolescents’ cognitive performance” attempts to quantify post-meal fatigue and suggests built-in nap times for workers and students as a solution to increase productivity. That is one example of how her research goes beyond the bottom line and examines the human element.

“Economics is a great tool to understand many phenomena that happen in society,” she said. “It gives you keys to understand many topics like the differential impacts of minimum wage policies on local labor markets depending on the level of competitivity of the industries you are looking at. Economics gives you tools to answer these questions with nuance and objectivity.”

Recent Work

Dr. Hervé’s most recently published article,“Specialists or generalists? Cross-Industry job mobility and occupational wages,” appeared in Labour Economics.

“With the rise of AI, some skills can now become outdated in less than 2 years,” she explained. “Given the increasing pace at which skills become obsolete, having super-specialized skills can be a double-edge sword. On one side it can be rewarded with higher wages, but it could also decrease your outside options and be detrimental to your ability to change jobs. One implication, especially in the current context of changing labor markets, is that it's very important for workers to constantly reskill to remain competitive. One possible takeaway is that firms and public policy should facilitate that process of reskilling for workers.”

“I have other projects where we are specifically looking at what type of technological skills make workers more competitive. Should you be a technological expert, or should you be a jack of all trades? What's going to be most profitable for you in the labor market? If you are an expert in your field, you’ll be paid more because the firm wants to retain you. The other side of that is that you're going to be less mobile across industries.”

One of her working papers, “The Golden Handcuffs Syndrome: Evidence on the High-Wage vs. Low-Mobility Trade-Off of Expert Technology Skills,” which she co-authored with 2024 Stevens Ph.D. graduate Shiyan Zhang, and Stevens faculty members Bei Yan and Jeffrey Nickerson, earned the Best Paper Award at the proceedings of the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management.

Her work also includes research into health and gender inequalities in low-and-middle-income (LMIC) countries. She has published articles in Global Social Policy and Social Indicators Research, bringing quantitative evidence of the socioeconomic inequalities faced by individuals with disabilities in more than 20 LMIC countries.

An "Atypcial" Background

Dr. Hervé’s brings personal experience into her work about changing skills and careers. She originally earned a master’s degree in engineering in environmental and life sciences from Paris-Saclay University — ParisTech, a prestigious French “Grande Ecole”. She then became an analyst for development finance projects for the French Agency for Development in Paris and continued on as a business analyst and engineer for SUEZ North America. Her resume also includes an internship in the environmental and economic policy department at the French embassy in Washington, D.C.

“My profile might be a little atypical among economists,” Dr. Hervé said. “In undergrad, I studied math, biology and physics. My graduate studies were in engineering, and I became a life science/ biology engineer. My engineering job focused on firm-level topics, analyzing the impact of technical issues on financial results. While I found this work interesting, I eventually realized I was more drawn to global social issues.”

Dr. Hervé was considering a move back to France after her professional experience at SUEZ, but a conversation with a colleague who was pursuing a doctorate in chemistry sparked the idea of converting her personal interest in economics into a career.

“I reached out to a macro-development economist, and he invited me to visit him,” she said. “We had a great talk, and he asked me if I wanted to attend his class for a bit. I went, and I just loved it. He encouraged me to apply to the Ph.D. program.”

She enrolled at Fordham in 2016, completing her Ph.D. in 2022. After completing her doctorate, she applied for positions in several industries, but remaining in academics was her first choice. She joined the Stevens faculty that fall.

“The reason I wanted to stay in academics is it gives you a tremendous amount of intellectual freedom,” Dr. Hervé explained. “If you're a curious person, being in academia is an amazing luxury. I can explore any subject that's interesting to me as long as I do it rigorously.”

The Stevens School of Business Experience

Dr. Hervé has found a home at Stevens, both professionally and personally. While the job originally drew her to Hoboken, the School of Business workplace culture has made it feel like home.

“When I read the job description for my position, it seemed to fit exactly my research topics,” she said. “During the interview, I also had this feeling I couldn’t quite explain. I think there's something specific at Stevens. Very collegiate, and that really resonated with me. I just loved the way people interacted with each other. It felt like a community.”

“I feel like I found another family here. As a French person in New York, I'm far from my family, so it's comforting to come to campus and feel surrounded by a community of good people. I believe Stevens is focused on hiring such individuals, it can't be a coincidence that there is such a concentration of benevolent people here.”