Jean Tirole (born 9 August 1953) is a French economist who is currently a professor of economics at Toulouse 1 Capitole University. He focuses on industrial organization, game theory, banking and finance, and psychology. In particular, he focuses on the regulation of economic activity in a way that does not hinder innovation while maintaining fair rules.[1]

Jean Tirole
Tirole in 2019
Born (1953-08-09) 9 August 1953 (age 70)
Troyes, France
Academic career
InstitutionToulouse 1 University Capitole
Toulouse School of Economics
Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales
Field
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Paris Dauphine University
École nationale des ponts et chaussées
École Polytechnique
Doctoral
advisor
Eric Maskin
Doctoral
students
Roland Bénabou
AwardsJohn von Neumann Award (1998)
BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2008)
Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics (2014)
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (2014)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

In 2014, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his analysis of market power and regulation.[2][3]

Education edit

Tirole received engineering degrees from the École Polytechnique in 1976, and from the École nationale des ponts et chaussées in 1978.

He was appointed a member of the elite Corps of Bridges, Waters and Forests, later completing graduate studies at Université Paris Dauphine; he received a DEA degree in 1976, and a Doctorat de troisième cycle in decision mathematics in 1978. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981, writing a thesis titled Essays in economic theory under the supervision of Eric Maskin.[4][5]

He started thinking about studying economics when he was 21 years old, which he found both “very rigorous”, but at the same time “still a social science”. He said he found “a lot of that human aspect” in economics, which he found important.[6]

Career edit

 
Toulouse School of Economics.

Tirole is chairman of the board of the Jean-Jacques Laffont Foundation at the Toulouse School of Economics, and scientific director of the Industrial Economics Institute (IDEI) at Toulouse 1 University Capitole. After receiving his doctorate from MIT in 1981, he worked as a researcher at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées until 1984. From 1984–1991, he was a professor of economics at MIT. His work by 1988 helped to define modern industrial organization theory by organising and synthesising the main results of the game-theory revolution vis-à-vis understanding of non-competitive markets.[7]

From 1994 to 1996 he was a professor of economics at the École Polytechnique. Tirole was involved with Jean-Jacques Laffont in the project of creating a new School of Economics in Toulouse. He is Engineer General of the Corps of Bridges, Waters and Forests, Chair of the Board of the Toulouse School of Economics, and a visiting professor at MIT, and has been a professor "cumulant" at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales since 1995.

He was president of the Econometric Society in 1998 and of the European Economic Association in 2001. Around this time, he was able to determine a way to calculate the optimal prices for the regulation of natural monopolies and wrote a number of articles about the regulation of capital markets—with a focus on the differential of control between decentralised lenders and the centralised control of bank management.[7] Tirole has been a member of the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques since 2011, the Conseil d'Analyse Économique since 2008 and the Conseil stratégique de la recherché since 2013. In the early 2010s, he showed that banks generally tend to take short-term risks and recommended a change in quantitative easing towards a more quality-based market stimulation policy.[7]

Contributions to economics edit

Tirole's textbook, The Theory of Industrial Organization, synthesised modern models of oligopolistic competition, analysing various cases where industries consist of a small number of firms with significant market power. He and Oliver Hart published a paper showing the conditions in which a vertical merger can result in foreclosure.[8] Rochet and Tirole analysed the implications of 2-sided markets for competition policy.[9] Fudenberg and Tirole also created a taxonomy of strategic effects in oligopolistic competition models.[10]

Awards edit

Tirole was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2014 for his analysis of market power and the regulation of natural monopolies. Tirole received doctorates honoris causa from the Université libre de Bruxelles in 1989, the London Business School and the University of Montreal in 2007, the University of Mannheim in 2011, the Athens University of Economics and Business and the University of Rome Tor Vergata in 2012 as well as the University of Lausanne in 2013.[11]

Tirole also received the inaugural BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management category in 2008, the Public Utility Research Center Distinguished Service Award (University of Florida) in 1997, and the Yrjö Jahnsson Award of the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation and the European Economic Association in 1993. He is a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993) and of the American Economic Association (1993). He has also been a Sloan Research Fellow (1985) and a Guggenheim Fellow (1988). He was a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1986 and an Economic Theory Fellow (Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory) in 2011. In 2013 Tirole was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.[12]

In 2007 he was awarded the highest award (the Gold Medal or médaille d'or) of the French CNRS. In 2008, he received the Prix du Cercle d'Oc; in 2009, he received an Outstanding Contributions to the Profession Award (International Association for Energy Economics); in 2010, he was granted the Chicago Mercantile ExchangeMathematical Sciences Research Institute (CME-MSRI) prize in Innovative Quantitative Innovations in Finance, the Tjalling Koopmans Asset Award (Tilburg University), and the "Prix Claude Levi-Strauss". He is among the most influential economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc.[13] Besides his numerous academic distinctions, he was the recipient of the Gold Medal of the city of Toulouse in 2007, a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur since 2007 and an Officer in the Ordre national du Mérite since 2010.

Publications edit

Tirole has published about 200 professional articles in economics and finance, as well as 10 books, including The Theory of Industrial Organization, Game Theory (with Drew Fudenberg), A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation (with Jean-Jacques Laffont), The Prudential Regulation of Banks (with Mathias Dewatripont), Competition in Telecommunications (with Jean-Jacques Laffont), Financial Crises, Liquidity, and the International Monetary System, and The Theory of Corporate Finance. His research covers industrial organization, regulation, game theory, public economics, banking and finance, psychology and economics, international finance and macroeconomics.

Books edit

  • Dynamic Models of Oligopoly (with D. Fudenberg), 1986.[14]
  • The Theory of Industrial Organization, MIT Press, 1988. Description and chapter-preview links.
  • Dynamic Models of Oligopoly (avec Drew Fudenberg, Harwood Academic Publishers GMbH, 1986.
  • Game Theory (with D. Fudenberg), MIT Press, 1991.[15]
  • A Theory of Incentives in Regulation and Procurement (with J.-J. Laffont), MIT Press,1993. Description & chapter-preview links.
  • The Prudential Regulation of Banks (with M. Dewatripont), MIT Press,1994.[16]
  • Competition in Telecommunications, MIT Press, 1999.[17]
  • Financial Crises, Liquidity and the International Monetary System, Princeton University Press, 2002.[18]
  • The Theory of Corporate Finance, Princeton University Press, 2005. Description. Association of American Publishers 2006 Award for Excellence.
  • Balancing the Banks (with Mathias Dewatripont, and Jean-Charles Rochet), Princeton University Press, 2010.[19]
  • Inside and Outside Liquidity (with Bengt Holmström), MIT Press, 2011.[20]
  • Théorie de l'organisation industrielle, Economica, 2015
  • Économie du bien commun, Presses universitaires de France, 2016
  • Economics for the common good, Princeton University Press; 2017[21]

References edit

  1. ^ Jean Tirole - Hyde Park Civilizace | Česká televize (in Czech), retrieved 12 July 2023
  2. ^ Sveriges Riksbank's Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2014., Sveriges Riksbank, 13 October 2014, retrieved 13 October 2014
  3. ^ Biography of Jean Tirole Archived 18 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ "Essays in economic theory / by Jean Tirole". MIT Library catalog. Retrieved 13 October 2014.
  5. ^ https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/cv/tirole_en.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  6. ^ "Jean Tirole - Hyde Park Civilizace | Česká televize".
  7. ^ a b c "Jean Tirole: Market Power and Regulation". Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. 13 October 2014.
  8. ^ Tirole, Jean (1988). The theory of industrial organization. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262200714. OCLC 464151427.
  9. ^ Rochet, Jean-Charles; Tirole, Jean (1 June 2003). "Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets". Journal of the European Economic Association. 1 (4): 990–1029. doi:10.1162/154247603322493212. ISSN 1542-4766.
  10. ^ "The Fat Cat Effect, the Puppy Dog Ploy and the Lean and Hungry Look" (PDF).
  11. ^ (in Italian) Laurea magistrale honoris causa Jean Tirole Archived 2 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ "Professor Jean Marcel Tirole HonFRSE - The Royal Society of Edinburgh". The Royal Society of Edinburgh. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  13. ^ "Economist Rankings at IDEAS". Retrieved 15 October 2014.
  14. ^ Fudenberg, Drew; Tirole, Jean (11 June 2018). Dynamic Models of Oligopoly. Routledge. ISBN 9780415269179 – via Google Books.
  15. ^ Fudenberg, Drew; Tirole, Jean. "Game Theory". The MIT Press.
  16. ^ Dewatripont, Mathias; Tirole, Jean. "The Prudential Regulation of Banks". The MIT Press.
  17. ^ Laffont, Jean-Jacques; Tirole, Jean. "Competition in Telecommunications". The MIT Press.
  18. ^ Tirole, Jean (21 July 2002). Financial Crises, Liquidity, and the International Monetary System. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691099859.
  19. ^ Dewatripont, Mathias; Rochet, Jean-Charles; Tirole, Jean; Tribe, Keith (2010). Balancing the banks: global lessons from the financial crisis. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-3464-8. OCLC 642206030.
  20. ^ Holmström, Bengt; Tirole, Jean. "Inside and Outside Liquidity". The MIT Press.
  21. ^ "Book Review: Economics for the Common Good by Jean Tirole". LSE Review of Books. 9 July 2018. Retrieved 13 August 2022.

External links edit

Awards
Preceded by Laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
2014
Succeeded by