David is a leading researcher in economic growth and population economics. Summarizing his vitae would be a difficult and useless work (his website makes mine ridicoulous). I have been a post-doc fellow of David during two years, we started to work on childlessness with Paula Gobbi (see below). It has been and it is still a great pleasure and some work to collaborate with these two. We use to retire in Cévennes in an old typical house of the 16th century, surrounded by wolves and other lovely animals. We then think to life, marriage, fertility and childleness. We are always surprised to see how this topic has been somehow overstudied by demographers and economists. We take also the occasion for enriching our musical and vinicole cultures.

Paula is a post-doc fellow from UCLouvain. She defended her PhD two years ago and has already published terrefic papers on childlessness. Part of her research is dedicated to intrahousehold bargaining over childcare. In addition to collaborate on childlessness, we have recently created the Insitutional Population Index (IPI) which indicates what kind of population policy can efficiently reduce fertility in developing countries. Paula co-organizes the Macro Lunch Seminar at IRES (UCLouvain) and is actively involved in her research center. As she will be soon on the job-market, I have to be sincere and say that she would be the perfect colleague for any researcher in economics (micro, macro) and demography.

I started my PhD with Victor in 2004 at the Paris School of Economics. In December of this year, he presented a paper of Bisin and Verdier on cultural transmission. Right after this presentation, I decided to write a paper linking cultural transmission of fertility norms to the demographic transition. It has been the first paper I published. We have shared with Victor our  PhD years, our entry in Assitant Professorship as well as in other significant stages of life... and also some hectoliters of beer. After all that, we decided it was time to write a paper together and we have naturally explored some of the Bisin and Verdier's cultural transmission mechanisms. Victor has published terrefic papers on the transmission of preferences inside economic and familial spheres. He also works on the emergence of laws in favor of mutual consent divorce and on gendered inequalities.

I met Robert in Louvain la Neuve as he was visting IRES where I was a post-doc. Robert studied economics at the University of Rostock where he is today a doctoral student. We work together on the rural exodus and its role in the Scandinavian demographic transition and urbanization. Working with somebody from Rostock requires some perseverance as joining this beautiful city in the Norst-East of Germany is time consuming: not less than 11hours and often up to 14h. But it is always ends with good moments and exciting research exercizes. Robert also works on optimal population policies, a topic I used to work on some years ago and that requires strong methodological and mathematical rigorosity. He is also implied in research on the quite complex German health insurance system. He should defend his PhD in the two following years.