Maurice Félix Charles Allais[2] (31 May 1911 – 9 October 2010) was a French physicist and economist, the 1988 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources", along with John Hicks (Value and Capital, 1939) and Paul Samuelson (The Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947), to neoclassical synthesis.

He was reluctant to write in or translate his work into English, and many of his major contributions became known to the dominant community only when they were independently rediscovered or popularized by English-speaking economists.

Allais attended the inaugural meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, but he was alone among the attendees to refuse to sign the statement of aims because of a disagreement over the extent of property rights.

He exerted an important influence, at the end of the war, on French economists such as Gérard Debreu, Jacques Lesourne, Edmond Malinvaud and Marcel Boiteux.

Paul Samuelson said "Had Allais earliest writings been in English, a generation of economic theory would have taken a different course", and felt the Nobel Prize should have been awarded to him much earlier.

With Traité d'économie pure, which he wrote between January 1941 and July 1943, based on his contributions, along with Hicks and Samuelson, to the concept of neoclassical synthesis.

In 1947, in the second part of his work Économie et Intérêt, Allais introduced time and currency and thus tackled the dynamics and growth of capitalist economies.

He also described the transaction demand for money rule before William Baumol and James Tobin[7] He was also responsible for early work in Behavioral economics, which in the US is generally attributed to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

Due to war conditions and his commitment to publish in French, his work was undertaken independently of Theory of games and economic behavior developed by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.

"[9] Bruce Caldwell states: "Allais disagreed with the group's stance on private property, this on vaguely Georgist lines.

[14][better source needed] Allais believes that Ricardo's theory is valid only in a steady state, but disappears when the specializations evolve and when the capital is mobile.