He also called a Tax on the capital book 1976

It should be a novel written with the psychological finesse of a Milan Kundera and two or three brilliant tests to tell about the life and work of Maurice Allais, died Saturday last in his hundredth year. Son of experts Paris, major of X in 1933 by the grace of Republican school, researcher villain, imprécateur, only French to have been honored by the Nobel in economics, in 1988 He had a route out of standards. And leave the memory of four very different faces.

The sparkling theorist

Young was going explores a wealth of universe, most often solitary. He is interested in the currency, general equilibrium, probabilities, to the capital Some of his results have become theorems. Here, remembered in three. First, the general balance between the supply and demand. Was going to shows that a competitive equilibrium is a situation of maximum efficiency and, conversely, that a situation of maximum efficiency is a competitive balance. This theorem leads to very liberal precepts - and was going to be long a staunch Liberal. But it pushes the reasoning also applied in the sectors "to increasing returns", where one large company produced more efficiently than hundreds of small. In this case, the equilibrium price is lower than that which ensures the profitability of the company. It is therefore legitimate that the State levies a tax to finance this deficit "optimal". Liberal but not bounded! These works have a huge range. The famous economist Paul Samuelson, dedicated by the Nobel as early as 1970, wrote that "If the first writings of Maurice Allais were in English, an entire generation of Economics would have taken a different course."

Second example, the economic growth. The researcher formulates principles of ce that will be called later the neoclassical theory of the croissance. It shows including his "golden rule": the long-term interest rate must be equal to the rate of increase of the population (the effort of investment is located then at the optimal level to maximize consumption). The first country to lower its massively, interest rates in the 1990s, is also one where the stagnation and decline in the population, was the earliest: the Japan. A chance

Third area, the decision-making in risky world. Since Blaise Pascal in the 17TH and Daniel Bernoulli in the 18th century, researchers assume that economic agents decide a risky action (for example, the purchase of a lottery ticket) in evaluating their expectation of gains from the probabilities associated with the action. Maurice Allais shows that this is true in the vicinity of certainty: when the gain is virtually assured, it refuses to take any chances. The "Allais paradox" has a major impact in market halls.

Exciting Professor

Allais is not only a researcher. Alumnus of the Ecole des mines, he taught for more than forty years. The Professor is demanding, brittle. He sometimes stops in the middle course to note an idea that runs through her mind. But its lessons are brilliant and it connects ideas and real life. He taught at Edmond Malinvaud, Jacques Lesourne, Marcel Boiteux, Gérard Debreu The story is that the latter two have fired the fate a scholarship to go to the United States. The winner, Debreu, remained there, became American and Nobel in economics in 1980. The loser, lame, became patron of EDF where he developed the tariffs at the marginal cost of production of electricity, directly from the work was going. Many other students to go were of great teachers, as if he had managed to convey not only his knowledge, but also his pedagogical talent.

The provocative innovator

No issue was going to stay locked up in a laboratory or a classroom. He wants to act on the world. As the economist Jean-Michel Grandmont, he is convinced that "abstract theory must always be faced with the facts and that theoretical models should be constructed for the primary purpose of providing answers to practical questions. It multiplies the economic policy recommendations. Some are still in full news. He proposed for example cutting into two banks: commercial banks which would be of service to their clients companies and banks for loans which would be the financial processing. He also called a "Tax on the capital" book (1976). He proposed a tax system centered around VAT and a tax on all forms of capital (was going to talks about "physical goods"), of 2 per year. It would be an instrument of justice (he chasing annuities) and efficiency (it encourages everyone to build its capital).

The distressing pamphleteer

But if was going to explored many productive ways, he also swept in some stalemates - with the same persistence, the same certainty of reason. In the 1950s, it had established a vibrating theory of the universe. He wanted to explain the fluctuations of the economy by the sun spots. In the last two decades of his life, he attacked free trade in touting the virtues of protectionism. As he was crowned his Nobel, it listened it dazed. He had never had such a hearing. The otherglobalists drank the whey, along with the readers of the "Figaro" which published his diatribes. But all were the coffee trade. No scientific research underlying the positions was going, any more than for the influence of sunspots. These texts will not even leave a scratch on economic science. Geniuses have always a box less or more. Maurice Allais was a genius.