He wrote his doctoral thesis at Berkeley on the time dimension in the economic theory of general equilibrium, directed by the professor Gérard Debreu (Nobel Prize of Economy, 1983).

[4] As a Corps des Mines engineer, de Montbrial chaired the department of Economics of the École Polytechnique between 1974 and 1992.

[4] He was a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique (1973-2008) and also chaired the department of Applied Economics and International Relations at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) between 1995 and 2008.

[6][7][8][9][10] In 1979, de Montbrial created the French Institute of Foreign Relations (Ifri),[11] which publishes – among others – the annual report RAMSES (yearly global report on the economic system and strategies)[12] and the periodical Politique étrangère (foreign policy).

[13] In 2008, Montbrial founded the World Policy Conference (WPC), an annual meeting which addresses global governance issues and which gathers political, economic and social leaders.

[16] de Montbrial is a member of the advisory committee of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (Washington),[4] the Carnegie Moscow Center, the advisory council of the Stanford Institute for International Studies and the editorial board of Russia in Global Affairs (Moscow).