[11] Mayer's research interests include international trade, multinational firms, economic geography, location theory, and industrial organization.
[12] His research has been acknowledged by the Best Young French Economist Award (2006), the Bronze Medal of the CNRS (2008) and a junior membership in the Institut Universitaire de France (2008–13).
[13] In particular, Thierry Mayer has played a major role in the development of CEPII's GeoDist database (together with Soledad Zignago), which includes bilateral distances between population centres for 225 countries and thus allows for particularly comprehensive gravity models of trade.
[14] In his research, Mayer has frequently collaborated with Keith Head (University of British Columbia and his SciencesPo colleague Philippe Martin.
[19] Finally, an important review of the pre-2014 literature on gravity models of trade for the Handbook of International Economics is also due to Mayer and Head.
[22] Finally, more recently, Mayer and Head have shown market potential to have been a significant driver of global economic per capita growth over the 1965-2003 period.
[29] Finally, together with José de Sousa and Soledad Zignago, Mayer has found that exporters in the Global South face 50% more difficulties in accessing developed markets than exporters in developed countries, though these difficulties have fallen by 95% between 1980 and 2006, with non-tariff barriers (and reductions therein) playing an important role.
[34] In further research on firm clusters in France, Martin and Florian Mayneris find that public policies promoting the development of industrial clusters - so-called "systèmes de production localisés" - have failed to reverse the relative decline in productivity for the firms it targeted, which had been selected specifically in depressed sectors and regions, and had no robust effect on employment or exports.