Today Aftalion’s name is mentioned mainly in three contexts: the accelerator theory, the economic cycle, and the role of the exchange rates in price movements.
Background
Albert Aftalion was born on 21 October 1874 in Ruse (Ruschuk) in a Sephardic Jewish family After Bulgarian Liberation, when he was aged just four, his family emigrated to France, setting up home in Nancy. Nancy hosted a large Bulgarian colony, with numerous students, many of them of dentistry. The city was also a temporary home to famous Bulgarian poet Peyo Yavorov.
Education
Aftalion graduated from the Sorbonne, authoring two doctoral theses: in law (1898) and economics (1899), the latter on Sismondi.
Career
He settled in Lille, teaching there between 1900 and 1922. While there, his interests evolved from an analysis of northern French economics (mining and cloth) and German harbors (Aftalion used sociological surveys) to applying statistics to economic study (he set up a hall of statistics) and political economy in which the stress fell on cyclic theory. In 1922 and 1923 Aftalion left Lille and moved to Paris to lecture in statistics at the Sorbonne. He did so for 11 years until inheriting Charles Rist’s post in 1934 and taking over lecturing in political economy.
After the Vichy government adopted its Jewish Statute,in late 1940 Aftalion was removed from lecturing and left in isolation in Toulouse, spending four years there. In late 1944, he was restored to the Sorbonne, teaching there until retirement in 1950. Albert Aftalion died aged 82 on 6 December 1956 at Chambesy and was buried at Auteuil near Geneva. His contemporaries remember him as an exceptionally modest and reserved person; as Lhomme put it, ‘an eternal researcher and an eternal student’.
Achievements
Works
book
" Les périodiques of surproduction crises "
"Les fondements du Socialisme: étude critique "
"Monnaie, prix et change "
"L’équilibre économiques dans les relations internationales"
"La valeur de la Monnaie dans l’économie contemporaine "