Jean-Jacques Laffont

Jean-Jacques Laffont was a brilliant economist. He was appreciated for his vision, courage and generosity. His scientific output is impressive in its quantity, quality and scope. He is the author of 17 books and 200 articles in numerous economic domains. He was one of the founding fathers of the theory of information, particularly in the area of anti-selection, the study of interactions and contracts under asymmetry of information. He received many honors: the Silver Medal of the CNRS (1990); Honorary Member of the American Economic Association (1991); Foreign Honorary Member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993); jointly with Jean Tirole, the Yrjo-Jahnsson prize from the European Economics Association, awarded each year to the best European economist under the age of 45 (1993).

Not satisfied with all that he was doing for economic research in France, Jean-Jacques Laffont also wanted to use his abilities for the benefit of developing countries. He travelled extensively, creating teaching facilities and encouraging research in China, Africa and Latin America. In another of his research fields, applied theory, Jean-Jacques Laffont focused on the application of the theory of incentives to the regulative mechanisms for network industries (telecommunications, electricity etc). Finally, while the technical demands of each subfield push most economists to specialise in a single area, he also made major contributions in econometrics. His work on the econometrics of auctions in the mid ‘nineties is considered path-breaking. His work on structural estimation in industrial economics (on the detection of cartels, for example) is also fundamental in the field.

Jean-Jacques Laffont displayed exceptional intellectual and social qualities which he used to serve his native region, the science of economics, the French university system, his students and his colleagues. These gifts allowed him to build both an outstanding career in research and as an academic innovator. As an academic leader, he always displayed a great generosity, encouraging initiative and the intellectual development of his co-workers. This same generous spirit was also manifested in his commitment to developmental economics, which was increasingly his focus these last years.

Jean-Jacques Laffont : a look back

Eric Maskin
Institute for Advanced Study

Jean-Jacques Laffont, economist extraordinaire and visionary founder of the Institut de l'Economie Industdelle (IDEI) in Toulouse, died at his home in Colomiers on May 1 after a valiant battle against cancer. He was fifty-seven years old.

Laffont is remarkable for having had three distinct professional identities and for performing at the very highest level in all of them. First, he was one of the great economists of our time. He was instrumental in transforming public economics, regulatory economics, and the economics of organizations into fields of study that put primary emphasis on conflicts in incentives. In a dozen books and many scores of articles, he examined these conflicts, which arise when the objectives of a society, industry, or organization differ from those of the agents (e.g., people or firms) that belong to them. 

Second, as an institution builder, Laffont assembled a formidable array of economic talent at IDEI, now one of the finest educational and research groups in the world. Somehow Laffont overcame the gravitational attraction of Paris and brought this talent to Toulouse—then a relative backwater. On a continent where universities are supported by the state, he put an alternative model on display: IDEI's funders come largely from the corporate world. They support the basic research vital to the intellectual life of the place in exchange for expert advice from IDEI's economists. Laffont not only invented this imaginative approach to funding research but personally attracted most of the partner firms that support IDEI today.

Third, he proved to be a forceful and infiuential policy advisor on regulation, competition, and economic development. More than most other theorists, he was a natural in this role. Even his purest theoretical papers were invariably motivated by issues of genuine practical consequence, and his scientific work provided a remarkably coherent and detailed conception of the role of public intervention.

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Jean-Jacques Laffont in the New York Times

Jean-Jacques Laffont, an economist known for developing mathematical models to estimate what something is worth in situations of deep uncertainty, died on May 1 in Toulouse, France.
He was 57.

The cause was cancer, said Jean Tirole, his colleague at the University of Toulouse.

In 17 books and 200 articles, Dr. Laffont brought an elegant simplicity to the branch of economics known as information theory, particularly the study of incentives in contracts where one party has more knowledge than the other, or different knowledge.

He particularly focused on what is known as the "free rider problem," referring to those who benefit from a particular action or policy but escape having to pay for it.

In interviews, Haynes Carson Goddard at the University of Cincinnati called Dr. Laffont "an economist's economist," and Jerry R. Green of Harvard said he was "an architect of systems"and "a very original figure."

Eric Maskin, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., called Dr.Laffont "simply one of the major figures of our time."

"Many people would say he was the leading economist in Europe," he added, "and that wouldn't be an unfair judgment."

Although Dr. Laffont's models were abstruse enough to satisfy the most theoretical economists, Dr. Green said they were adapted for practical purposes by companies, as well as by public television for scheduling programs.

His later career centered on developing policies for improving the economies of less developed countries.

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