Emmanuelle Auriol studied Economics at the University of Toulouse where she received her PhD in 1992. After spending one year at the University of California at Berkeley as a post-doc she joined the Economics Department at Toulouse. She passed the French economics aggregation in 1996 and she spent 2 years at the University of Aix-Marseille II. She is now a Professor at Toulouse School of Economics and a fellow of CEPR, IUF, EEA, EUDN, CESifo and a​ former member of the EEA executive committee of the EEA Council and of the executive committee of EUDN. She is the chair of WinE, the standing committee of the EEA for the promotion of women in the economics profession..

Her research interests include industrial organization, regulation and labor economy with a special focus on developing economies.  She relies on theory and cross-country analysis to derive policy recommendations on industrial organization issues such as privatization, regulation or markets design. Since in practice policy implementation matters as much as policy design, she studies government organization. She also studies secular NGOs and religious organisations, as they are key actors in public policies in developing countries.  Throughout the years she received several grants and awards for her publications.