Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management, commonly known as IAE Aix-en-Provence, was the first Graduate School of Management in the French public university system. According to The Independent, IAE Aix is "a prestigious, double-accredited institution, with an international approach to business combining both classic and innovative teaching methods". It is the only French public university entity to receive dual international accreditation: the European standard of excellence EQUIS in 1999, and the AMBA accreditation in 2004 for its MBA Change & Innovation, in 2005 for its master's programmes and in 2007 for its Executive Part-time MBA. The school is composed of 40 permanent faculty members, and invites more than 30 international professors and 150 business speakers each year to conduct lectures and courses within the various programmes. IAE Aix offers graduate level programmes in general management, international management, internal audit of organisations, service management, internal and external communications management, management and information technologies, international financial management and applied marketing. In 2011, the M.Sc. in General Management was ranked 2nd in France along with the M.Sc. in Services Management and Marketing being ranked 3rd and the M.Sc. in Audit and Corporate Governance also being ranked 3rd in the country by SMBG. In 1990, IAE Aix and ESSEC Business School (École supérieure des sciences économiques et commerciales) signed an agreement to unite and offer a joint Doctorate Programme, allowing ESSEC professors to teach in the Research Oriented Master programme in Aix-en-Provence. Furthermore, after Research Oriented Master graduation, students can attend the ESSEC Doctorate seminars and have an ESSEC Research Advisor (Directeur de Recherche). In the same way, ESSEC students can enroll in the IAE Aix's Research Oriented Master and Doctorate programmes. In both cases, the members of the thesis juries come from both IAE Aix and ESSEC. The Doctorate title is awarded by Aix-Marseille University. Economics Aix-Marseille School of Economics (AMSE) is a gathering of three big laboratories in economics, part of AMU: GREQAM (Groupement de Recherche en Economie Quantitative d'Aix Marseille), SESSTIM (Sciences Économiques & Sociales de la Santé & Traitement de l'Information Médicale), and IDEP (Institut D’Economie Publique). GREQAM is a research center which specializes in all areas of economics, with strong concentrations in macroeconomics, econometrics, game theory, economic philosophy and public economics. It counts two Fellows of the Econometric Society among its members, and is consistently ranked as one of the top five research centers in economics in France. SESSTIM consists