Alternating with the Maurice Allais Prize for Economics, the Maurice Allais Foundation under the aegis of the Mines Paris Foundation has decided to organize, every second year, meetings between academic figures and high level economic decision-makers in charge of public policy, or of private or public enterprise, in order to provide fuller information to all concerned about the course and the future of our economic and social world.
These Maurice Allais Workshops faithfully continue Professor Allais’s scientific approach, for he constantly encouraged dialogue between economic theorists and practitioners, especially under the auspices of the Groupe de Recherches Économiques et Sociales, (G.R.E.C.S.) which he chaired from 1945 to 1969 (click here for further information).
They will be devoted to themes of great significance for our XXIst century economies, many of them already broached in Maurice Allais’s writings. Thus the Maurice Allais Workshops will contribute to spreading knowledge of the works of the 1988 Nobel Economics laureate and will draw inspiration from them to nourish reflection about today’s economic debates.
Maurice Allais Workshop
17th June 2016 at the MINES ParisTech
« Non-conventional monetary policies and the financial system –
Contemporary Issues and the Legacy of Maurice Allais »,
chaired by Jean-Claude Trichet, Honorary Chairman of the Foundation’s Scientific Committee
Having exhausted the potential impacts of an accommodating monetary policy and facing interest rates close to zero, indeed sometimes below this imagined “lower bound”, the economic sluggishness following the 2008 crisis led some European countries, as well as Japan, to introduce, not unlike the U.S. some years earlier, non conventional monetary policies. The latter gave rise to great hopes as well as fears of inflation, then to various scepticisms, indeed to various bitter complaints.
Are such policies mirages? Shouldn’t we substitute structural reforms for them? Is the banking and monetary system which evolved out of the Second World War adequate? Behind such questions hide as many fears for the near economic future.
Maurice Allais, Prix Nobel 1988 in Economic Science had dealt with similar topics in various writings. Quite naturally then, the Maurice Allais Foundation has selected the theme for its 2016 Workshop. Great witnesses – central bankers, specialised journalists as well as academics, among whom the 2014 Nobel Prize winner – had then the opportunity to sketch the possible futures and strategies for a large conversant audience as well as for professionals.