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On Allais's "self-aggrandizement": 
 
Being a "senior professor in France in past decades" (but neither a "pupil" 
nor "supporter" of Allais), I am by definition wholly incompetent about the 
origin of stability theorems. Let me then concentrate on the last two 
paragraphs of E. Roy Weintraub's point of view: 
 
1) Higher education in France is split in two separate systems, the "Grandes 
Ecoles" one (which was created more than two centuries ago to train 
engineers and has become in fact the craddle of high-ranking executives and 
public officers) and the University one. Allais never belonged to a French 
university but has been professor at Ecole des Mines de Paris, one of the 
most distinguished "Grandes Ecoles". 
 
2) Higher research in France is split in two separate (although 
interconnected) systems, the CNRS one ("Centre National de la Recherche 
Scientifique") and the University one. Allais never belonged to a university 
research center. He has been a senior researcher ("Directeur de recherche") 
at the CNRS and chief of the research center in economics at Ecole des Mines 
de Paris. 
 
3) The recruitment of senior university professors in France is completely 
different in Economics from what it is in all other disciplines (except Law 
and Medicine). This institutional factor is probably in our discipline the 
most important "root in the lack of criticism faced in the academic system 
by senior professors in France in past decades". But it may have influenced 
Allais's behaviour only through the complex alchemy of 1) and 2) above. 
 
4) The fascination exerted still today by French high-level "intellectuels" 
on US academics is as surprising as the fascination exerted in the past in 
France by Soviet science. It is all the more surprising about economic 
issues where Sartre and Foucault were not at their best. I am not sure that 
Bourdieu (who always opposed the existence of economics as a separate 
science) might be the best judge about modern (or past) history of economic 
thought. 
 
5) By the way, it is funny to see Bourdieu drawing on ... Allais in the 
introduction to his last book ("Les structures sociales de l'économie", 
Paris: Seuil, 2000: 19): "Many observers, notably alerted by specially 
clear-sighted economists, like Maurice Allais, have noted that a systematic 
gap exists between theoretical models and effective practices" (my 
translation, GD). The reference by Bourdieu to Allais is "Le comportement de 
l'homme rationnel devant le risque: critique des postulats et axiomes de 
l'école américaine" ["The behaviour of the rational man facing risk: a 
critique of the postulates and axioms of the american school"], 
Econometrica, 21, 1953: 503-46 (yes, in those days, there were still papers 
in French in anglo-saxon economic reviews!). 
 
Ghislain Deleplace 
Professor at the University Paris 8 (Saint-Denis) 
 
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