Nobel Prize rounds off dazzling year for French economists

Tirole won the most prestigious accolade in academia on Monday for his work on market power and regulation.

“That really thumbs the nose at French bashing!” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted moments after the announcement.

In recent weeks, French economics have made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In the face of growing criticism from the European Commission and the opposition alike, the government is showing no signs of tackling the country’s ballooning deficit in its upcoming budget.

Conservative members of the European Parliament grilled former finance minister Pierre Moscovici on his suitability for the post of European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro when he had failed to even balance the books in France.

But while French economic policy is controversial, French economists have consistently excelled and won praise in international academic circles.

Piketty and Duflo stars in the US

Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century became an instant bestseller when it was translated into English last April. Television networks, political leaders and students all lined up to attend his conferences during the book’s launch.

Similar scenes have again taken place in the past week in Germany, where a translation of Piketty’s work on income inequality has just been published.

Piketty is one of seven French nationals on the list of 25 most promising economists worldwide published in August by the International Monetary Fund – an institution headed by former French finance minister Christine Lagarde.

Also featured on the IMF’s list is Esther Duflo, the French-American advisor to US President Barack Obama on global development policy.

While many French academics on the IMF's list of brightest young economists work in the US or the UK, Tirole is based at the Toulouse School of Economics in France -- allowing President François Hollande to remark in a statement on Monday that “this Nobel Prize highlights the quality of research in our country”.