This HDR deals with economic approaches of groundwater management. The document describes a scientific career path made in applied research centres. My work is adressing public policy issues and it is firmly rooted into physical and human realities of numerouys case studies. It deals with four main issues: 1) the analysis of conflicts over water management at the watershed level; 2) the design of economic instruments for regulating water use; 3) economic assessment of groundwater protection policies against pollution; and 4) modeling and simulation of long term evolution of the water resources - users complex system, in a context of global change. These issues are addressed using concept and tolls from neoclassical microeconomics, public economics, public economicsand environmental economics.
