----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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) ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]