1988 Nobel Laureate in Economics
In 1988 Maurice Allais became the first French citizen to win the Nobel Prize in economics. He won it for his contribution to the understanding of market behavior and the efficient use of resources. Allais also showed that his insights could be applied to help set efficient prices for state-owned monopolies, of which France had many. Allais' work paralleled, and sometimes preceded, similar work done by English-speaking economists Sir John Hicks and Paul Samuelson. He also proved a result in growth theory in 1947 that had been credited to Edmund Phelps in 1961.
Allais did not get credit as early as his English counterparts because his work was in French. Commented Samuelson: "Had Allais' earliest writings been in English, a generation of economic theory would have taken a different course." Allais also helped revive the quantity theory of money (monetarism). In utility theory Allais discovered and resolved a paradox about how people behave when choosing between various risks; it is now called the Allais paradox.
Autobiography:
I was born May 31, 1911, in Paris. My parents owned a small cheese shop, and my maternal grandfather was a carpentry worker. I thus came from what is commonly known as the working class.
In August 1914, my father was called to war, and then taken prisoner. He died in captivity in Germany on March 27, 1915. My youth, indeed my entire life, was deeply marked by this, directly and indirectly.
Albeit in often difficult conditions, I was nevertheless able to pursue my secondary studies. I received my high school baccalaureate diploma in Latin and Science in 1928, then my two baccalaureate diplomas in Mathematics and Philosophy in 1929. Throughout my college career I was generally first in my year in almost all subjects, including French and Latin as well as Mathematics.
Fascinated by History, I wanted to apply to the Ecole des Chartes, but on the insistence of my mathematics teacher I entered the special mathematics class in order to prepare for the Ecole Polytechnique, which I entered in 1931. I graduated first in my class in 1933, which is commonly considered to be a "summum" in France. Indeed, the Ecole Polytechnique, together with the Ecole Normale Superieure, are the top of French education in the sciences.
My choice of a government administration upon graduation was the "Corps National des Mines", not because of any particular vocation, but simply because each year the top graduates of the Ecole Polytechnique (three in my class) always chose this government service because of the career possibilities it opened up in the country's large industrial enterprises.
After a year of military service, first in the Artillery School at Fontainebleau and then in the Alpine Army, and two years at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines in Paris, I started as an engineer in the mines public service in October 1936.
Professional Career:
In 1937, at the age of twenty six, I found myself in charge of the Nantes
Mines and Quarries Service, which included five of the 89 French "departments",
and also put in charge of a number of controls, in particular that of
the general and local railway system.
In 1939, I was called back to the Alpine Army on the Italian front, and was given command of a heavy artillery battery in the area of Briancon. But the real war only lasted two weeks, from June 10, 1940, when Italy declared war on France, until June 25, 1940, the date of the armistice.
Released from service, I took up my old position in Nantes in duly 1940 in the German occupation zone. From October 1943 to April 1948 I was director of le Bureau of Mines Documentation and Statistics in Paris.
From January 1941 to April 1948 I simultaneously carried out my administrative functions and published my first works: two fundamental works, A la Reserche d'une Discipline Economique, (In Quest of an Economic Discipline), and Economic et Interet (Economy and Interest, 1947); and three minor works, Economic Pure et Rendement Social (Pure Economics and Social Efficiency, 1945), Prolégomenes a la Reconstruction économique du Monde (Prolegomena for the World Economic Reconstruction, 1945), and Abondance ou Misère (Abundance or Misery, 1946), as well as various news articles. Throughout this period I worked very hard, at least eighty hours per week.
From April 1948 on, I was relieved of all administrative duties and was able to devote all my time to teaching, research, and writing for publication. I was professor of Economic Analysis at the "Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines " from 1944 on, and Director of a research unit at the "Centre de la Recherche Scientifique " (C.N.R.S.) from 1946 on. At various times I held teaching positions at other institutions, such as the Institute of statistics at the University of Paris (1947-1968), the Thomas Jefferson Center of the University of Virginia as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar 1958 - 1959), the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva (1967-l970), and the University of Paris-X (1970-1985).
I retired from the civil service on May 31, 1980, but, thanks to the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines and theCentre National de la Recherche Scientific, I have been able to keep some means for working and to continue to in teaching, research, and writing.
I have received many awards for my works (fourteen scientific prizes from 1933 till 1987). The most important was the Gold Medal of the National Center for Scientific Research (C.N.R.S.), the most distinguished honour in French Science ( as a rule there is only one Gold Medal every year for all sciences). It was awarded to me in 1978 for my lifetime work, the first, and, so far, the only time an economist has ever received this honour.
Selected Works:
"Growth and Inflation." Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 1, no. 3 (August 1969):355-426.
"A Restatement of the Quantity Theory of Money." American Economic Review 56 (December 1966):1123-57.
"The Role of Capital in Economic Development." In The Econometric Approach to Development Planning. 1965.