The “Nouvelle Ecole de Lausanne”: Firmin Oules
In 1939, on Boninsegni’s retirement, two successors were appointed: for teaching economics and statistics, the Law Faculty gave preference to the French Firmin Oules over Stanislao Scalfati, an Italian; and for teaching general sociology, the School of Social and Political Sciences chose Jean Piaget, who had already been teaching general psychology there for three years.
First as an Extraordinary Professor, Piaget accessed full professorship in 1945, but left Lausanne in the early 1950s and, while keeping the chair he held in Geneva, delivered lessons in genetic psychology at the Sorbonne until 1963. In 1947, Firmin Oules was appointed full professor of political and financial economics, as well as of history of economic thought, and remained in Lausanne until his retirement in 1974. After Boninsegni’s long parenthesis, Oules sought to revive economic research in Lausanne, with the works of Walras and Pareto as springboards for further findings. On the one hand, he drastically criticized the use of mathematical language and logic, which he called “L. Walras and Pareto’s evil genius”; on the other, he developed the concepts of interdependence and general economic equilibrium, which he saw as the Ecole de Lausanne’s essential and specific features. Above all, the Nouvelle Ecole de Lausanne (New Lausanne School) highlighted the Walrasian idea of enlightening economic policy with scientific theory. Walras was then understood as “the founder of scientific economic policy” and the New School became firmly committed to economic topical issues. Yet, it was still rather confidential and it died out after Oules retired.However, the Chair of Political Economy in the Faculty of Law lived on, occupied since 1967 by Franςois Schaller, who used to teach political economy and the history of economic doctrines. In 1986, Pascal Bridel succeeded him and became the latest holder of the famous chair, because the new 2004 University Act profoundly changed its organization and removed all chairs.