Maurice Allais
Encyclopedia
Maurice Félix Charles Allais (31 May 1911 9 October 2010) was a French economist, and was the 1988 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
"for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources."
, France
, Allais attended the Lycée Lakanal
, graduated from the École Polytechnique
in Paris
and studied at the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris
. His academic and non-academic 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 a Doctor-Engineer title from the University of Paris, Faculty of Science. He also held teaching positions at various institutions, including at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
in Geneva.
As an economist he made contributions to decision theory
, monetary policy
and other areas. He was reluctant to write in or translate his work into English
, and the folly of this decision became clear when many of his major contributions became known to the dominant anglophone community only when they were independently rediscovered or popularized by English-speaking economists. For example, in one of his major works, Économie et Intérêt (1947), he introduced the first overlapping generations model
(later popularized by Paul Samuelson
in 1958), introduced the golden rule of optimal growth
(later popularized by Edmund Phelps
) or described the transaction demand for money rule (later found in William Baumol
's work
). He was also responsible for early work in Behavioral economics, which in the US is generally attributed to Daniel Kahneman
and Amos Tversky
.
His name is particularly associated with what is commonly known as the Allais paradox
, a decision problem he first presented in 1953 which contradicts the expected utility hypothesis
.
In 1992, Maurice Allais criticized the Maastricht Treaty
for its excessive emphasis on free trade. He also expressed reservations on the single European currency
. In 2005, he expressed similar reservations concerning the European constitution.
, special relativity
and electromagnetism
, in order to investigate possible links between these fields. He reported three effects with respect to these experiments:
Over the years, a number of pendulum experiments were performed by scientists around the world to verify his findings. However, the results were mixed.
Allais's explanation for his observations contradicts the theory of relativity
, thus he became a relativity critic
.
Subsequently, in order to compare the optical anomaly with established experimental results, Prof. Allais performed a statistical analysis of the thousands of interferometer measurements of Dayton Miller
and claimed to find periodicities corresponding with the sidereal day, the equinox
es and other celestial event
s .
According to Allais, the anomalous effects demonstrate an insofar unknown anisotropy
of space, as well as an absolute velocity effect.
Allais disagreed with Robert S. Shankland
's analysis of Miller's data, which many physicists consider as a conclusive dismissal of the subject. Shankland attributed the deviations from relativity predictions to systematic errors of readings and thermal instabilities, despite Miller's claims to the contrary. Actually, some physicists, like Alan Kostelecky
, are testing the possibility of space anisotropy (not directly related to Allais's fringe work). This type of mainstream research is currently ongoing.
Roger Balian
wrote a note to rebut Allais's interpretation of Miller's result, which was in turn rebutted by Allais
Not only was Allais interested in physics; he also wrote on the history of physics. In the relativity priority dispute
, he saw Albert Einstein
as a plagiarist and denied the validity of mainstream experimental data. He often mixed the two subjects in the same papers.
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics, but officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel , is an award for outstanding contributions to the field of economics, generally regarded as one of the...
"for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources."
The economist
Born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Allais attended the Lycée Lakanal
Lycée Lakanal
Lycée Lakanal is a secondary public school in Sceaux, France. It was named after Joseph Lakanal, a French politician, and an original member of the Institut de France. The school also offers a middle school and highly ranked "classes préparatoires" undergraduate training...
, graduated from the École Polytechnique
École Polytechnique
The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and studied at the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris
École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris
The École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris was created in 1783 by King Louis XVI in order to train intelligent directors of mines. It is one of the most prominent French engineering schoolsThe École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (also known as Mines ParisTech, École des Mines de...
. His academic and non-academic 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 a Doctor-Engineer title from the University of Paris, Faculty of Science. He also held teaching positions at various institutions, including at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies is a highly selective postgraduate educational and research institute situated in Geneva, Switzerland...
in Geneva.
As an economist he made contributions to decision theory
Decision theory
Decision theory in economics, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision...
, monetary policy
Monetary policy
Monetary policy is the process by which the monetary authority of a country controls the supply of money, often targeting a rate of interest for the purpose of promoting economic growth and stability. The official goals usually include relatively stable prices and low unemployment...
and other areas. He was reluctant to write in or translate his work into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, and the folly of this decision became clear when many of his major contributions became known to the dominant anglophone community only when they were independently rediscovered or popularized by English-speaking economists. For example, in one of his major works, Économie et Intérêt (1947), he introduced the first overlapping generations model
Overlapping generations model
An overlapping generations model, abbreviated to OLG model, is a type of economic model in which agents live a finite length of time and live long enough to endure into at least one period of the next generation's lives....
(later popularized by Paul Samuelson
Paul Samuelson
Paul Anthony Samuelson was an American economist, and the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Swedish Royal Academies stated, when awarding the prize, that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in...
in 1958), introduced the golden rule of optimal growth
Golden Rule savings rate
In economics, the Golden Rule savings rate is the rate of savings which maximizes steady state level or growth of consumption , as for example in the Solow growth model...
(later popularized by Edmund Phelps
Edmund Phelps
Edmund Strother Phelps, Jr. is an American economist and the winner of the 2006 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Early in his career he became renowned for his research at Yale's Cowles Foundation in the first half of the 1960s on the sources of economic growth...
) or described the transaction demand for money rule (later found in William Baumol
William Baumol
William Jack Baumol is an American economist. He is a professor of economics at New York University and is also affiliated with Princeton University. Baumol has written extensively about labor market and other economic factors that affect the economy. He also made valuable contributions to the...
's work
Baumol-Tobin model
The Baumol-Tobin model is an economic model of the transactions demand for money as developed independently by William Baumol and James Tobin . The theory relies on the trade off between the liquidity provided by holding money and the interest foregone by holding one’s assets in the form of...
). He was also responsible for early work in Behavioral economics, which in the US is generally attributed to Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel laureate. He is notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology....
and Amos Tversky
Amos Tversky
Amos Nathan Tversky, was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a pioneer of cognitive science, a longtime collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement...
.
His name is particularly associated with what is commonly known as the Allais paradox
Allais paradox
The Allais paradox is a choice problem designed by Maurice Allais to show an inconsistency of actual observed choices with the predictions of expected utility theory.-Statement of the Problem:...
, a decision problem he first presented in 1953 which contradicts the expected utility hypothesis
Expected utility hypothesis
In economics, game theory, and decision theory the expected utility hypothesis is a theory of utility in which "betting preferences" of people with regard to uncertain outcomes are represented by a function of the payouts , the probabilities of occurrence, risk aversion, and the different utility...
.
In 1992, Maurice Allais criticized the Maastricht Treaty
Maastricht Treaty
The Maastricht Treaty was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands. On 9–10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Council which drafted the treaty...
for its excessive emphasis on free trade. He also expressed reservations on the single European currency
Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union
The Economic and Monetary Union is an umbrella term for the group of policies aimed at converging the economies of members of the European Union in three stages so as to allow them to adopt a single currency, the euro. As such, it is largely synonymous with the eurozone.All member states of the...
. In 2005, he expressed similar reservations concerning the European constitution.
His interest in physics
Besides his career in economics, Maurice Allais performed experiments between 1952 and 1960 in the fields of gravitationGravitation
Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass. Gravitation is most familiar as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped...
, special relativity
Special relativity
Special relativity is the physical theory of measurement in an inertial frame of reference proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".It generalizes Galileo's...
and electromagnetism
Electromagnetism
Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. The other three are the strong interaction, the weak interaction and gravitation...
, in order to investigate possible links between these fields. He reported three effects with respect to these experiments:
- An unexpected anomalous effect in the angular velocity of the plane of oscillation of a paraconical pendulumParaconical pendulum-Paraconical pendulum:Maurice Allais, a French researcher, invented the paraconical pendulum around 1950, and during the 1950s he conducted six marathon series of long-term observations, during each of which his team manually operated and manually monitored his pendulum non-stop over about a month...
, detected during two partial solar eclipses in 1954 and 1959. This claimed effect is now called the Allais effectAllais effectThe Allais effect is a claimed anomalous precession of the plane of oscillation of a pendulum during a solar eclipse. It has been speculated to be unexplained by standard physical models of gravitation, but recent mainstream physics publications tend rather to posit conventional explanations for...
. - Anomalous irregularities in the oscillation of the paraconical pendulumParaconical pendulum-Paraconical pendulum:Maurice Allais, a French researcher, invented the paraconical pendulum around 1950, and during the 1950s he conducted six marathon series of long-term observations, during each of which his team manually operated and manually monitored his pendulum non-stop over about a month...
, with periodicity 24h50min, which corresponds to the tidal lunar day. - Anomalous irregularities in optical theodoliteTheodoliteA theodolite is a precision instrument for measuring angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. Theodolites are mainly used for surveying applications, and have been adapted for specialized purposes in fields like metrology and rocket launch technology...
measurements, with the same tidal periodicity.
Over the years, a number of pendulum experiments were performed by scientists around the world to verify his findings. However, the results were mixed.
Allais's explanation for his observations contradicts the theory of relativity
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
, thus he became a relativity critic
Criticism of relativity theory
Criticism of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity was mainly expressed in the early years after its publication on a scientific, pseudoscientific, philosophical, or ideological basis. Reasons for criticism were, for example, alternative theories, rejection of the abstract-mathematical method,...
.
Subsequently, in order to compare the optical anomaly with established experimental results, Prof. Allais performed a statistical analysis of the thousands of interferometer measurements of Dayton Miller
Dayton Miller
Dayton Clarence Miller was an American physicist, astronomer, acoustician, and accomplished amateur flautist...
and claimed to find periodicities corresponding with the sidereal day, the equinox
Equinox
An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator...
es and other celestial event
Celestial event
A celestial event is an astronomical phenomenon of interest that involves one or more celestial bodies. Examples of celestial events include the various phases of the Moon, meteor showers, comets, solar and lunar eclipses, planetary oppositions, conjunctions, and occultations....
s .
According to Allais, the anomalous effects demonstrate an insofar unknown anisotropy
Anisotropy
Anisotropy is the property of being directionally dependent, as opposed to isotropy, which implies identical properties in all directions. It can be defined as a difference, when measured along different axes, in a material's physical or mechanical properties An example of anisotropy is the light...
of space, as well as an absolute velocity effect.
Allais disagreed with Robert S. Shankland
Robert S. Shankland
Robert Sherwood Shankland was an American physicist and historian.-Biography:Robert S. Shankland was an undergraduate at the Case School for Applied Sciences from 1925–1929 and received his master's degree in 1933. He completed his Ph.D. degree in 1935 for work on photon scattering with Arthur...
's analysis of Miller's data, which many physicists consider as a conclusive dismissal of the subject. Shankland attributed the deviations from relativity predictions to systematic errors of readings and thermal instabilities, despite Miller's claims to the contrary. Actually, some physicists, like Alan Kostelecky
Alan Kostelecký
Alan Kostelecký is a theoretical physicist who is currently a distinguished professor of physics at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is noted for his work on Lorentz symmetry breaking in particle physics...
, are testing the possibility of space anisotropy (not directly related to Allais's fringe work). This type of mainstream research is currently ongoing.
Roger Balian
Roger Balian
Roger Balian is a French physicist who has worked on quantum thermodynamics and theory of measurement.Balian is a member of French Académie des sciences . His important work includes the Balian-Low theorem. He teaches statistical physics at the École Polytechnique.-References:...
wrote a note to rebut Allais's interpretation of Miller's result, which was in turn rebutted by Allais
Not only was Allais interested in physics; he also wrote on the history of physics. In the relativity priority dispute
Relativity priority dispute
Albert Einstein presented the theories of Special Relativity and General Relativity in groundbreaking publications that either contained no formal references to previous literature, or referred only to a small number of his predecessors for fundamental results on which he based his theories, most...
, he saw Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
as a plagiarist and denied the validity of mainstream experimental data. He often mixed the two subjects in the same papers.
Death
Allais died on 9 October, 2010 at his home near Paris at the age of 99. He reportedly died of natural causes.Notable quotes
- "In essence, the present creation of money, out of nothing by the banking system, is similar – I do not hesitate to say it in order to make people clearly realize what is at stake here – to the creation of money by counterfeiters, so rightly condemned by law."
External links
- "Maurice Allais -Autobiography" Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
, nobel.se. - Eugene G. Garfield The 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics
- "Maurice Allais" – Allais' website
- Allais' CV, 1987
- IDEAS/RePEc
- Maurice Allais, Ten Notes published in the Proceedings of the French Academy of Sciences (Comptes Rendus des Seances de l'Academie 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.)
- Allais's entry on the History of economic thought website
- Maurice Allais, "Should the Laws of Gravitation be Reconsidered?", Aero/Space Engineering 9, 46–55 (1959).