My Life in Finance
Posted: 10 Jan 2012
There are 2 versions of this paper
My Life in Finance
Date Written: December 2011
Abstract
I was invited by the editors to contribute a professional autobiography to the Annual Review of Financial Economics. I focus on what I think is my best stuff. Readers interested in the rest can download my vita from the Web site of the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. I only briefly discuss ideas and their origins to give the flavor of context and motivation. I do not attempt to review the contributions of others, which is likely to raise feathers. Mea culpa in advance. Finance is the most successful branch of economics in terms of theory and empirical work, the interplay between the two, and the penetration of financial research into other areas of economics and real-world applications. I have been doing research in finance almost since its start, when Markowitz (1952 , 1959) and Modigliani & Miller (1958) set the field on the path to becoming a serious scientific discipline. It has been fun to see it all, to contribute, and to be a friend and colleague to the giants who created the field.
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