Nobel economics prize winner Maurice Allais died on Saturday. He was 99.
Few months ago, A. Diemer, J. Lallement and B. Munier had edited a 
collection of papers devoted to various aspects of his thought.
Maurice Allais et la science economique - Paris, Clement Juglar,
with a tribute by the late P. A. Samuelson
Hommage à Maurice Allais
Paul A. Samuelson
MIT, Prix Nobel de Sciences Economiques
In Joseph Schumpeter’s first Harvard lecture that I could attend back in 
1935, I heard him say: Of the four greatest economists ever, three have 
been French. Chronologically those are Francois Quesnay, A.A. Cournot, 
and first among equals, Leon Walras.
I recall this now, for if Schumpeter had been allotted more decades of 
life, maybe he would have added to that list the name of Maurice Allais. 
Before I met Master Allais in 1948 Paris, already I knew his fame. How come?
Back in 1945, immediately after Hitler’s defeat, by chance and 
privilege, John and Ursula Hicks were jeeped into Paris. When they were 
recognized to be economists, their host said: “You must come to hear an 
important economics lecture” (I know this from talking to Ursula Hicks 
not much later). She continued, perhaps with a little picturesque 
exaggeration: “We stepped into a room where there were workers, miners 
and soldiers”. An intense young lecturer was teaching at a mile a 
minute. Once my provincial English ears became accustomed to his rapid 
flow of French, 1 realized that he was discussing before that mob the 
question of whether the rate of interest could be zero in a stationary 
state, And maybe too he was floating the conjecture that if the 
Communist Party captured the end-of-war electorate, they would be well 
advised to organize their economy by use of the general-equilibrium 
pricing system. To quote her again, she speculated that when isolated by 
the German occupation, Maurice Allais had been privately mastering 
Irving Fisher’s famous Edwardian-Age treatises on capital and interest 
theory.
During my 1948 Guggenheim fellowship sabbatical year, Allais and I met 
in Paris, where he was surrounded by such able protégés as Marcel 
Boiteux and Gerard Debreu. As a lunch-time guest at the Jockey Club, I 
accepted a glass of good red wine while he abstained. When I asked how 
come, he replied: I admire both Irving Fisher’s economics and his views 
about healthy living. To prolong my life expectancy, I refuse wine on 
weekdays. Because quality of life is important along with duration, on 
weekends I imbibe moderately.
Because so many of Allais’s fundamental contributions appeared in French 
and not English, his Nobel Prize came later than it ought to have. Both 
in quality and quantity of Allais’s publications, his has been a 
remarkable career. Creative originality plus industrious energy are the 
key to scholarly distinction. Had their lives overlapped, Henri Poincaré 
would have been proud of his countryman, Maurice Allais.
17 septembre 2008