Is Dominique Strauss-Khan really "the best economist of France"?
Jean Tirole is a French economist, with a degree from a French school, working at a French school, and as of the June 2015 the tenth most cited living economist as measured by Repec with 13,649 citations. That's about the same citation count as an entire top 100 ranked department. Everyone else in the top 10 works in an American institution and was born in the USA (8) or Russia (1). Dominique Strauss-Khan doesn't even make the top 5 percent list.