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Maurice Félix Charles Allais (31 May 19119 October 2010) was a French
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
and
economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
, the 1988 winner of the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...
"for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources", along with
John Hicks Sir John Richards Hicks (8 April 1904 – 20 May 1989) was a British economist. He is considered one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. The most familiar of his many contributions in the field of economic ...
(Value and Capital, 1939) and
Paul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he " ...
(The Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947), to
neoclassical synthesis The neoclassical synthesis (NCS), neoclassical–Keynesian synthesis, or just neo-Keynesianism was a neoclassical economics academic movement and paradigm in economics that worked towards reconciling the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Key ...
. They formalize the self-regulation of markets, that
Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in m ...
refuted, while reiterating some of his ideas. Born in Paris, France, Allais attended the
Lycée Lakanal Lycée Lakanal is a public secondary school in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, France, in the Paris metropolitan area. It was named after Joseph Lakanal, a French politician, and an original member of the Institut de France. The school also offers a mid ...
, graduated from the
École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...
in Paris and studied at the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris. His academic and other posts have included being Professor of Economics at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (since 1944) and Director of its Economic Analysis Centre (since 1946). In 1949, he received the title of doctor-engineer from the
University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...
, Faculty of Science. He also held teaching positions at various institutions, including at the University of Paris X–Nanterre. His first works oriented him towards the sciences of the concrete and the experiments of fundamental physics, on which he will also publish numerous works, notably on pendular oscillations and the laws of gravitation. It's after a trip in 1933 to the United States during the Great Depression, that he decides to make the economy. Allais died at his home in Saint-Cloud, near Paris, at the age of 99. Allais considered
Léon Walras Marie-Esprit-Léon Walras (; 16 December 1834 – 5 January 1910) was a French mathematical economist and Georgist. He formulated the marginal theory of value (independently of William Stanley Jevons and Carl Menger) and pioneered the developme ...
, Wilfredo Pareto, and
Irving Fisher Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 – April 29, 1947) was an American economist, statistician, inventor, eugenicist and progressive social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt de ...
to be his primary influences. He was reluctant to write in or translate his work into English, and many of his major contributions became known to the dominant community only when they were independently rediscovered or popularized by English-speaking economists. At the same time, he claimed Keynes's liberalism and declared himself in favor of an important public sector. Allais attended the inaugural meeting of the
Mont Pelerin Society The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is an international organization composed of economists, philosophers, historians, intellectuals and business leaders.Michael Novak, 'The Moral Imperative of a Free Economy', in '' The 4% Solution: Unleashing the E ...
, but he was alone among the attendees to refuse to sign the statement of aims because of a disagreement over the extent of property rights. He exerted an important influence, at the end of the war, on French economists such as
Gérard Debreu Gérard Debreu (; 4 July 1921 – 31 December 2004) was a French-born economist and mathematician. Best known as a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he began work in 1962, he won the 1983 Nobel Memorial Prize ...
, Jacques Lesourne, Edmond Malinvaud and Marcel Boiteux.
Paul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he " ...
said "''Had Allais earliest writings been in English, a generation of economic theory would have taken a different course"'', and felt the Nobel Prize should have been awarded to him much earlier. Assar Lindbeck, the chairman of the selection committee, considered Allais as "a giant within the world of economic analysis".


Economist

Author of several theoretical and applied economics studies, his work has focused on the development of mathematical economics, especially in the fields of general equilibrium theory, capital theory,
decision theory Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical ...
, and
monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for federal funds, very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money s ...
. A pioneer in macroeconomic monetary analyses, the economist has been authoritative for his theoretical studies of risk, illustrated by his famous paradox: "the less the risk is, the more speculators flee." He has also been a pioneer in various fields such as the role of central banks and the pricing of public services.


Inspired at first by Walras

His first book develops the microeconomic aspect. With ''Traité d'économie pure'', which he wrote between January 1941 and July 1943, based on his contributions, along with Hicks and Samuelson, to the concept of
neoclassical synthesis The neoclassical synthesis (NCS), neoclassical–Keynesian synthesis, or just neo-Keynesianism was a neoclassical economics academic movement and paradigm in economics that worked towards reconciling the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Key ...
. He anticipates several of the propositions and theorems put forward by Hicks, Samuelson and others, sometimes giving them a more general and rigorous formulation. In particular, he demonstrates the equivalence theorems that
Kenneth Arrow Kenneth Joseph Arrow (23 August 1921 – 21 February 2017) was an American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist. He was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with John Hicks in 1972. In economi ...
and Gerard Debreu will find in 1954: "Every equilibrium situation in a market economy is a situation of maximum efficiency, and reciprocally, every situation of maximum efficiency Is a equilibrium situation in a market economy. " The market thus ensures economic efficiency and optimal distribution of income in the nation. At the same time, Samuelson exposed the process of trial and error which leads to the equilibrium of markets. In 1947, in the second part of his work ''Économie et Intérêt'', Allais introduced time and currency and thus tackled the dynamics and growth of capitalist economies. Again, he made several proposals, that would be later attributed to other, better-known economists. He introduced the first
overlapping generations model The overlapping generations (OLG) model is one of the dominating frameworks of analysis in the study of macroeconomic dynamics and economic growth. In contrast, to the   Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans neoclassical growth model in which individuals are ...
(OLG model) (later popularized and attributed to
Paul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he " ...
in 1958), introduced the golden rule of optimal growth before Trevor Swan and
Edmund Phelps Edmund Strother Phelps (born July 26, 1933) is an American economist and the recipient of the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Early in his career, he became known for his research at Yale's Cowles Foundation in the first half of ...
, show that an interest rate equal to the growth rate maximizes consumption. He also described the transaction demand for money rule before William Baumol and
James Tobin James Tobin (March 5, 1918 – March 11, 2002) was an American economist who served on the Council of Economic Advisers and consulted with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and taught at Harvard and Yale Universities. He ...
He was also responsible for early work in
Behavioral economics Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals or institutions, such as how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory. ...
, which in the US is generally attributed to
Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (; he, דניאל כהנמן; born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was award ...
and
Amos Tversky Amos Nathan Tversky ( he, עמוס טברסקי; March 16, 1937 – June 2, 1996) was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his ...
. In the 1940s, Allais worked on "decision theory" (or "theory of choice") under uncertainty and developed a theory of
cardinal utility In economics, a cardinal utility function or scale is a utility index that preserves preference orderings uniquely up to positive affine transformations. Two utility indices are related by an affine transformation if for the value u(x_i) of one i ...
. Due to war conditions and his commitment to publish in French, his work was undertaken independently of Theory of games and economic behavior developed by
John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest c ...
and
Oskar Morgenstern Oskar Morgenstern (January 24, 1902 – July 26, 1977) was an Austrian-American economist. In collaboration with mathematician John von Neumann, he founded the mathematical field of game theory as applied to the social sciences and strategic decis ...
. He formulated the Allais paradox in 1953, which questions the traditional model of rationality of choices and contradicts the expected utility hypothesis. It shows that when confronted with a lottery, an individual does not maximize his hoped-for gains, but rather aims at certainty.


Liberalism and socialism

Although he participated in the
Mont Pelerin Society The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is an international organization composed of economists, philosophers, historians, intellectuals and business leaders.Michael Novak, 'The Moral Imperative of a Free Economy', in '' The 4% Solution: Unleashing the E ...
, Allais was convinced of an affinity between liberalism and socialism, stating: "‘For the true liberal, as for the true socialist, it matters little whether the means of production are privately or collectively owned, so long as the essential goals they pursue, namely efficiency and justice, are achieved." He advocated "competitive planning" as a "possible synthesis of liberalism and socialism." In 1959, he and other French members of Mont Pelerin such as
Jacques Rueff Jacques Léon Rueff (23 August 1896 – 23 April 1978) was a French economist and adviser to the French government. Life An influential French conservative and free market thinker, Rueff was born the son of a well known Parisian physician and s ...
established an organization called '' Mouvement pour une société libre'' which spoke readily of a
social liberalism Social liberalism (german: Sozialliberalismus, es, socioliberalismo, nl, Sociaalliberalisme), also known as new liberalism in the United Kingdom, modern liberalism, or simply liberalism in the contemporary United States, left-liberalism ...
that would go "beyond ''laissez-faire'' and socialism."


Rejection of general equilibrium theory

Finally he criticizes the drifts of a discipline that privileges mathematical virtuosity at the expense of realism. With this "new scholastic totalitarianism" he moved away, in the 60s, from the analysis of the general equilibrium developed by Walras and replace it with a study focusing on real markets rather than a utopian market, favoring the study of imbalance and based on the idea of surplus. The economic dynamics are thus characterized by the research, the realization and the distribution of a surplus and there is a general equilibrium when there is no longer any realizable surplus. Allais’s
Hereditary Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic informa ...
,
Relativist Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. Ther ...
and Logistic (HRL) theory of
monetary Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are ...
dynamics contains an original theory of expectations formation that is a genuine alternative to both adaptive and
rational expectations In economics, "rational expectations" are model-consistent expectations, in that agents inside the model are assumed to "know the model" and on average take the model's predictions as valid. Rational expectations ensure internal consistency i ...
. It was praised by
Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...
in 1968 with the following words: "''This work '' he HRL formulation' introduces a very basic and important distinction between
psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries bet ...
time and chronological
time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
. It is one of the most important and original paper that has been written for a long time … for its consideration of the problem of the formation of expectations''". Allais's contribution has nevertheless been "lost": it has been absent from the debate about expectations.


Position against globalization

On the first page, he dedicates his book ''La mondialisation: destruction des emplois et de la croissance'' (1990), ''Globalization: destruction of jobs and growth'', ''"To the countless victims worldwide of the free-trade ideology, ideology as fatal as it is erroneous, and to all those who are not blind to some partisan passion"''. Allais believes that Ricardo's theory is valid only in a steady state, but disappears when the specializations evolve and when the capital is mobile. According to him, "Globalization can only bring everywhere instability, unemployment, injustices ..and "widespread globalization is neither inevitable nor necessary nor desirable". He considers that "unemployment arise from the offshoring, themselves due to the excessive differences in wages"; "reasoned protectionism between countries with very different incomes, is not only justified but absolutely necessary"; and the absence of protection will destroy all industries of each country with higher incomes. In his opinion, crisis and globalization are linked: ''"The financial and banking crisis which, is only the spectacular symptom of a deeper economic crisis: the deregulation of competition in the global labor market"''. "Current unemployment is due to this total liberalization of trade ..As such, it constitutes a major foolishness, starting from an unbelievable contradiction. Just as attributing the crisis of 1929 to protectionist causes is a historical contradiction. The true origin was already in the careless development of credit in the years preceding it." In 1992, Allais criticised the
Maastricht Treaty The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve member states of the European Communities, it announced "a new stage in the ...
for its excessive emphasis on
free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econ ...
. He also expressed reservations on the single European currency. In 2005, he expressed similar reservations concerning the European Constitution.


Physics

Besides his career in economics, he performed experiments between 1952 and 1960 in the fields of
gravitation In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stron ...
,
special relativity In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory regarding the relationship between space and time. In Albert Einstein's original treatment, the theory is based on two postulates: # The law ...
and
electromagnetism In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions o ...
, to investigate possible links between the fields. He reported three effects: # An unexpected anomalous effect in the angular velocity of the plane of oscillation of a
paraconical pendulum The paraconical pendulum is a type of pendulum invented in the 1950s by Maurice Allais, a French researcher. During the 1950s, Maurice Allais conducted six marathon series of long-term observations, during each of which his team manually operated a ...
, detected during two partial solar eclipses in 1954 and 1959. The claimed effect is now called the
Allais effect The Allais effect is the alleged anomalous behavior of pendulums or gravimeters which is sometimes purportedly observed during a solar eclipse. The effect was first reported as an anomalous precession of the plane of oscillation of a Fouca ...
. # Anomalous irregularities in the oscillation of the
paraconical pendulum The paraconical pendulum is a type of pendulum invented in the 1950s by Maurice Allais, a French researcher. During the 1950s, Maurice Allais conducted six marathon series of long-term observations, during each of which his team manually operated a ...
with respect to a sidereal diurnal periodicity of 23 hours 56 minutes and tidal periodicity of 24 hours 50 minutes. # Anomalous irregularities in optical
theodolite A theodolite () is a precision optical instrument for measuring angles between designated visible points in the horizontal and vertical planes. The traditional use has been for land surveying, but it is also used extensively for building and ...
measurements, with the same
lunisolar A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures, combining lunar calendars and solar calendars. The date of Lunisolar calendars therefore indicates both the Moon phase and the time of the solar year, that is the position of the Sun in the Ea ...
periodicities. Over the years, a number of pendulum experiments were performed by scientists around the world to test his findings. However, the results were mixed.


Bibliography


Les Lignes directrices de mon œuvre, Conférence Nobel prononcée devant l'Académie royale des Sciences de Suède
* ''À la recherche d'une discipline économique'' (1943) ; * ''Économie pure et rendement social'' (1945) ; * ''Abondance ou misère'' (1946) ; * ''Économie et intérêt'', (1947) ; * ''La Gestion des houillères nationalisées et la théorie économique'' (1949) ; * ''Le Comportement de l’homme rationnel devant le risque: critique des postulats et axiomes de l’école américaine'' (1953) ; * ''Les Fondements comptables de la macro-économique'' (1954) ; * ''L'Europe unie, route de la prospérité'' (1959) ; * ''Le Tiers monde au carrefour'' (1961) ; * ''L'Algérie d'Evian'' (1962); * ''The Role of Capital in Economic Development'' (Rôle du capital dans le développement économique) (1963) ; * ''Reformulation de la théorie quantitative de la monnaie'' (1965) ; * ''Growth Without Inflation'' (Croissance sans inflation) (1967) ; * ''La Libéralisation des relations économiques internationales – Accords commerciaux ou intégration économique'' (1970) ; * ''L'Inflation française et la croissance – Mythologies et réalité'' (1974) ; * ''L'Impôt sur le capital et la réforme monétaire'' (1976) ; * ''La Théorie générale des surplus'' (1978) ; * ''Les Conditions monétaires d'une économie de marchés'' (1987) ; * ''Autoportrait'' (1989) ; * ''Pour l'indexation'' (1990) ; * ''Les Bouleversements à l’Est. Que faire?'' (1990) ; * ''La Théorie générale des surplus et l'économie de marchés'' (1990 – trois mémoires de 1967, 1971, 1988) ; * ''Contributions à la théorie générale de l'efficacité maximale et des surplus'' (1990 – quatre mémoires de 1964, 1965, 1973 et 1975) ; * ''Pour la réforme de la fiscalité'' André-Jacques Holbecq
''Résumé synthétique de l'ouvrage « Pour la réforme de la fiscalité »''
, societal, 2009.
(1990) ; * ''L'Europe face à son avenir. Que faire?'' (1991) ; * ''Erreurs et impasses de la construction européenne'' (1992) ; * ''Combats pour l'Europe. 1992–1994'' (1994) ; * ''La Crise mondiale aujourd'hui'' (Clément Juglar, 1999) ; * ''Nouveaux combats pour l'Europe. 1995–2002'' (2002) ; * ''L'Europe en crise. Que faire?'' (2005) ; * ''La Mondialisation, la destruction des emplois et de la croissance, l'évidence empirique'' (Ed. Clément Juglar, 2007 – ) ;
''Lettre aux Français – Contre les Tabous Indiscutés''
(2009).


Notes


References

* R. S. Shankland, S. W. McCuskey, F. C. Leone, and G. Kuerti, "New analysis of the interferometric observations of Dayton C. Miller", Rev. Mod. Phys. 27, 167–178 (1955). * R. S. Shankland, "Michelson's role in the development of relativity", Applied Optics 12 (10), 2280 (1973).


External links

* * Eugene G. Garfield
The 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics
' * "

'" – Allais' website





from Econ Journal Watch * Maurice Allais, Ten Notes published in the Proceedings of the French Academy of Sciences (Comptes Rendus des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences), dated 4/11/57, 13/11/57, 18/11/57, 13/5/57, 4/12/57, 25/11/57, 3/11/58, 22/12/58, 9/2/59, and 19/1/59, available in French at www.allais.info/alltrans/allaisnot.htm, some also in English translation. (These were, of course, peer-reviewed physics publications.)

* Maurice Allais, "Should the Laws of Gravitation be Reconsidered?", ''Aero/Space Engineering'' 9, 46–55 (1959). *
Biography of Maurice Allais
from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences {{DEFAULTSORT:Allais, Maurice École Polytechnique alumni Mines ParisTech alumni Corps des mines Members of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies faculty French economists General equilibrium theorists Lycée Lakanal alumni Historians of science French physicists Nobel laureates in Economics Fellows of the Econometric Society French Nobel laureates Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur 1911 births 2010 deaths Member of the Mont Pelerin Society