Background
LESOURNE, Jacques François was born in 1928 in Louisiana Rochelle, France.
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Jacques François LESOURNE
Edit ProfileEducation
Ingénieur Diploma Ecole Polytechnique, 1951. Ingénieur Diploma Ecole des Mines, Paris, 1953.
Career
Chief Economics, Charbonnages de France, 1954-1957. Director General, President, Serna and Metra International, 1958-1975. Director, Interfutures Project, Organisation for Economic Company-operation and Development,
9.
Professor of Economics, Ecole des Mines, Saint-Etienne, 1958-1961.
Professor Industrial Economics, Ecole National Supérieur de la Statistique, 1960-1963. Director d’Enseignement, Institute, Institution August Comte, 1979-1981.
Professor of Economics, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France, since 1974. Editorial Board, J Policy Modeling, International J. Industrial Organization.
Achievements
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Fellow, Econometric Society, 1967. Chairman, Association Française Informatique et Recherches Opérationnelle, 1964-1967. Council, Institute, Institution Management Science, 1976-1979. Vice-Chairman, International Institute, Institution Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, 1973-1979. Member, Committee Comptes et Budgets Economics, France, 1975-1979. President, Committee Emploi 8ème Plan, France, 1979-1981. Member, Committee, du Bilan, 1981-1982. Chairman, Association Française Science Economics, 1981-1983. Member, International State Institute, Institution, 1974.
Views
At the beginning of my career my main concern was the development of industrial economics, both at the theoretical and at the applied level (in relation to operations research). Hence my first book, Economic Technique and Industrial Management. But, having become the president of an international consulting group, I realised that progress had to be made to extend the analysis from a static to a dynamic environment and to integrate better the financial and the social dimensions with the productive one.
The book on Modèles de croissance l’entreprise and several other papers have been the result of this research. Simultaneously, I had to study the social profitability of many projects in the fields of energy, transportation, urban and regional planning, which led me to look at the foundations of cost-benefit analysis and to present them in various papers and in a book, Cost-benefit Analysis: Theory and Applications.
Forecasting and prospective research was an important activity of the consulting firm I was involved in. lieutenant may have been the reason why I was appointed in 1976 Director of the Interfutures project at Organisation for Economic Company-operation and Development.
This was an opportunity to deepen my interest in global modelling and long-term international prospective analysis. My book (Number. 10, above) has been the product of several years of research in that direction.
Since the early 1960s I had been convinced of the fruitfulness of a system approach in the social sciences. In 1976, I published on this subject a book (Number.
6, above) which is more an essay than a scientific text, but the views expressed in that book have inspired my research in prospective analysis and in economic theory in the last years. I am working
now on self-organisation in economic systems (for instance on market processes). One of my next books will be devoted to this topic.
