Tirole received engineering degrees from the École Polytechnique in Paris in 1976, and from École nationale des ponts et chaussées, Paris (1978) and a "Doctorat de 3ème cycle" in decision mathematics from the Paris Dauphine University (1978). In 1981 he received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jean Tirole received Doctorates Honoris Causa from the Free University of Brussels in 1989 and the London Business School in 2007, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management category in 2008, the Public Utility Research Center Distinguished Service Award (University of Florida) in 1997, and the Yrjö Jahnsson Award of the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation and the European Economic Association in 1993. He is a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993) and of the American Economic Association (1993). He has also been a Sloan Fellow (1985) and a Guggenheim Fellow . In 2007 was awarded the highest award (the Gold Medal or médaille d'or) of the French CNRS. He is among the most influential economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc.

He has given several prestigious invited lectures, including the Hicks lecture (Oxford 1992), the Walras-Pareto lectures (Lausanne 1992), the Schumpeter lecture (European Economic Association 1993), the Pazner lecture (Tel Aviv 1993), the Walras-Bowley lecture (Econometric Society 1994), the Munich lectures (Munich 1996),the JMCB lecture(1999), the Wicksell lectures(1999), the Baffi lectures (Bank of Italy , 2000) , the Scribner lectures and the Frank Graham lecture at Princeton (2002), the Marshall lectures in Cambridge (2003), the Tinbergen lecture in Amsterdam (2003), the David Kinley lectures at University of Illinois (2005), the inaugural JEEA lecture (2005), the inaugural Telecom Italia lecture (Milan, 2005), the Snyder lecture (UCSB, 2005) and the Rosenthal lecture (BU 2006).

Jean Tirole has published about one-hundred eighty professional articles in economics and finance, as well as 8 books including The Theory of Industrial Organization, Game Theory (with Drew Fudenberg), A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation (with Jean-Jacques Laffont), The Prudential Regulation of Banks (with Mathias Dewatripont), Competition in Telecommunications (with Jean-Jacques Laffont), Financial Crises, Liquidity, and the International Monetary System , and The Theory of Corporate Finance. His research covers industrial organization, regulation, game theory, banking and finance, psychology and economics, international finance and macroeconomics.

Books

• Concurrence Imparfaite, Paris: Editions Economica,1985 (in French).
• The Theory of Industrial Organization, MIT Press. (1988) Description and chapter-preview links.
• A Theory of Incentives in Regulation and Procurement (with J.-J. Laffont), MIT Press,1993. Description & chapter- preview links.
• The Prudential Regulation of Banks (with M. Dewatripont), MIT Press,1994. Description.
• The Theory of Corporate Finance, Princeton University Press, 2005. Description. Association of American Publishers 2006 Award for Excellence.

Articles

Industrial organization

• "The Fat Cat Effect, the Puppy Dog Ploy and the Lean and Hungry Look," (with D. Fudenberg), American Economic Review, 74: 361-368
• "Capital as a Commitment: Strategic Investment to Deter Mobility," (with D. Fudenberg), Journal of Economic Theory, 31: 227-250.
• "A Theory of Dynamic Oligopoly I: Overview and Quantity Competition with Large Fixed Costs," (with E. Maskin), Econometrica, 56: 549-570.
• "A Theory of Dynamic Oligopoly II: Price Competition," (with E. Maskin), Econometrica, 56: 571-600
• "Bypass and Creamskimming," (with J.-J. Laffont), American Economic Review, 80: 1042-1061.
• "Two-Sided Markets: A Progress Report," (with J.C. Rochet), Rand Journal of Economics, 37(3): 645-667.
• Reliability and Competitive Electricity Markets," (with P. Joskow), Rand Journal of Economics, 38(1): 60-84.

Finance and corporate governance

• "On the Possibility of Speculation under Rational Expectations," Econometrica, 50: 1163-1181.
• "Asset Bubbles and Overlapping Generations," Econometrica, 53(6): 1499...1528
• "Domestic and International Supply of Liquidity," (with B. Holmström), American Economic Review, Papers & Proceedings, 92: 42-45.
• "LAPM: A Liquidity-Based Asset Pricing Model," (with B. Holmström), Journal of Finance, vol. 56(5): 1837-1867.Smith Breeden award (distinguished paper) of the Journal of Finance
• "Modelling Aggregate Liquidity," (with Bengt Holmström), American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 86: 187-191.
• "A Theory of Debt and Equity: Diversity of Securities and Manager-Share- holder Congruence," (with M. Dewatripont), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 109: 1027-1054.
• "Corporate Governance," Econometrica, 69 (1): 1-35.

Psychology and cognition

• "Belief in a Just World and Redistributive Politics," (with R. Bénabou), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121: 699-746.
• "Incentives and Prosocial Behavior," (with R. Bénabou), American Economic Review, 96(5): 1652-1678.

Contract theory

• "Contract Renegotiation and Coasian Dynamics," (with 0. Hart), Review of Economic Studies, 55: 509-540.
• "The Dynamics of Incentive Contracts," (with J.-J. Laffont), Econometrica, 56: 1153-1175
• "Incomplete Contracts: Where Do We Stand?" Econometrica, 67(4):741—781.
• "Unforeseen Contingencies and Incomplete Contracts," (with E. Maskin), Review of Economic Studies, 66(1): 83-114.

Politics and economics

• "Party Governance and Ideological Bias," (with B. Caillaud), European Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings,43: 779-789
• "Parties as Political Intermediaries," (with B. Caillaud), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4): 1453-89
• "The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government," (with E. Maskin), American Economic Review, 94: 1034-1054