Biography:Robert C. Merton

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Short description: American economist
Robert C. Merton
Robert Merton November 2010 03(1).jpg
Merton in 2010
Born (1944-07-31) July 31, 1944 (age 79)
New York City, New York, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materColumbia University
California Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Known forBlack–Scholes–Merton model
ICAPM
Merton's portfolio problem
Merton model
Fractional Finance
Long-Term Capital Management
AwardsNobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1997)
Scientific career
FieldsFinance, economics
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology Harvard University
Doctoral advisorPaul Samuelson
Doctoral studentsJonathan E. Ingersoll[1]
Robert Jarrow

Robert Cox Merton (born July 31, 1944) is an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, especially the first continuous-time option pricing model, the Black–Scholes–Merton model.[2][3][4] In 1997 Merton together with Myron Scholes were awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for the method to determine the value of derivatives.[5][6]

Merton was on the board of directors of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a highly leveraged hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, wiping out most of the value paid in by the investors, and requiring a $3.6 billion bailout from a group of 14 banks, in a deal brokered and put together by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.[7]

Merton's current research focus is on the topics of lifecycle investing[8] and retirement funding,[9] measuring and monitoring systemic risks in macrofinance,[10] and financial innovation coupled with changing dynamics in financial institutions.[11]

Early life and education

Merton was born in New York City to sociologist Robert K. Merton, who was of Jewish descent[12] and Suzanne Carhart, who was from a "multigenerational southern New Jersey Methodist/Quaker family."[5] He grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.[5]

Merton earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Mathematics from the School of Engineering and Applied Science of Columbia University, a Masters of Science from the California Institute of Technology, and his doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970 under the guidance of Paul Samuelson.[2]

Career

In 1970 Merton joined the faculty of the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he taught until 1988.[13] Subsequently, Merton moved to Harvard University, where he was George Fisher Baker Professor of Business Administration from 1988 to 1998. He was the John and Natty McArthur University Professor from 1998-2010, becoming Professor Emeritus at Harvard University in 2010.[11][14]

In 2010 Robert C. Merton rejoined the MIT Sloan School of Management[15] where he is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance.[11] Since 2010, he also has been a Resident Scientist at Dimensional Fund Advisors, working on pension management.[16]

Merton received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new methodology to value derivatives.[5] He is past President of the American Finance Association (1986),[17] a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1993)[18] and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[19]

Research

Merton’s research focuses on finance theory including lifecycle finance, optimal intertemporal portfolio selection, capital asset pricing, pricing of options, risky corporate debt, loan guarantees, and other complex derivative securities. He has also written on the operation and regulation of financial institutions. Merton’s current academic interests include financial innovation and dynamics of institutional change, controlling the propagation of macro financial risk, and improving methods of measuring and managing sovereign risk. He is the author of Continuous-Time Finance, and a co-author of Cases in Financial Engineering: Applied Studies of Financial Innovation and The Global Financial System: A Functional Perspective; Finance; and Financial Economics. Merton was a founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Financial Economics, serving from 2009 to 2021.[20][21]

Merton has also been recognized for translating finance science into practice. He received the inaugural Financial Engineer of the Year Award from the International Association of Financial Engineers in 1993,[22] which also elected him a senior fellow. Derivatives Strategy magazine named him to its Derivatives Hall of Fame in 1998[23] as did Risk magazine to its Risk Hall of Fame in 2002. He also received Risk’s Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to the field of risk management in 2003.[24] A distinguished fellow of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance ('Q Group', 1997)[5] and a fellow of the Financial Management Association (2000),[25] Merton received the Nicholas Molodovsky Award for Outstanding Contribution to Investment Research from the CFA Institute (2003).[26]

His first professional association with a hedge fund came in 1968. His advisor at the time, Paul Samuelson, brought him on board Arbitrage Management Company (AMC), to join founder Michael Goodkin and chief executive Harry Markowitz. AMC is the first known attempt at computerized arbitrage trading. After a successful run as a private hedge fund, AMC was sold to Stuart & Co. in 1971.[27] In 1993, Merton co-founded a hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, which earned high returns for four years but later lost $4.6 billion in 1998 and was bailed out by a consortium of banks and closed out in early 2000.[28][29]

Personal life

Merton married June Rose in 1966. They separated in 1996. They have three children: two sons and one daughter.[30]

Honours and awards

  • In 1986, Merton became a Fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[19]
  • In 1986, Merton was President of the American Finance Association.[17]
  • In 1993, Merton became a member of the U.S. United States National Academy of Sciences.[18]
  • In 1993, Merton was awarded the International INA - Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Prize, National Academy of Lincei, Rome.[5]
  • In 1993, Merton won the inaugural Financial Engineer of the Year Award by the International Association of Financial Engineers (since renamed International Association for Quantitative Finance).[19]
  • In 1994, Merton became of Senior Fellow at the International Association of Financial Engineers (since renamed International Association for Quantitative Finance)[31]
  • In 1997, Merton became a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance ('Q Group').[5]
  • In 1997, Merton was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Myron Scholes for their work on stock options.[32]
  • In 1998, Merton was awarded the Michael I. Pupin Medal for Service to the Nation from Columbia University.[33]
  • In 1999, Merton was awarded a lifetime achievement award in mathematical finance.[34]
  • In 2000, Merton became a FMA Fellow at the Financial Management Association.[25]
  • In 2000, Merton became a Fellow at the Society of Fellows, American Finance Association.[35]
  • In 2003 Merton received the Nicholas Molodovsky Award for Outstanding Contribution to Investment Research from the CFA Institute.[26]
  • In 2005 the Baker Library at Harvard University opened The Merton Exhibit in his honor.[36]
  • In 2009, Merton was awarded the Robert A. Muh Award in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[37]
  • In 2009, Merton was awarded the Tjalling C. Koopmans Asset Award from Tilburg University.[38]
  • In 2010, Merton received the Kolmogorov medal from the University of London.[39]
  • In 2010, Merton received the Hamilton Medal from the Royal Irish Academy.[40]
  • In 2011, Merton received the CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award.[41]
  • In 2013, Merton received the WFE Award for Excellence from the World Federation of Exchanges.[42]
  • In 2014, Merton received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Financial Intermediation Research Society.[43]
  • In 2017, Merton received the Finance Diamond Price from the Fundacion de Investigacion IMEF, Mexico.[44]
  • In 2022, Merton received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Plan Sponsor Council of America (PSCA).[45]

Publications

  • Theory of rational option pricing (1973) [1]

See also

  • List of economists
  • List of quantitative analysts
  • List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

  1. ↑ Ingersoll, Jonathan E. (1976), A contingent-claims valuation of convertible bonds and the optimal policies for call and conversion. Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Bodie, Zvi (1 November 2020). "Robert C. Merton and the Science of Finance" (in en). Annual Review of Financial Economics 12 (1): 19–38. doi:10.1146/annurev-financial-100520-074656. ISSN 1941-1367. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-financial-100520-074656. Retrieved 25 March 2023. 
  3. ↑ Lo, Andrew W. (1 November 2020). "Robert C. Merton: The First Financial Engineer" (in en). Annual Review of Financial Economics 12 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1146/annurev-financial-042720-055018. ISSN 1941-1367. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-financial-042720-055018. 
  4. ↑ Carr, Peter (2006). "Harvard's Financial Scientist". Bloomberg Markets (October): pp. 166–169. http://rmerton.scripts.mit.edu/rmerton/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Harvards_Financial-Scientist.pdf. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Miss nobel-id as parameter , accessed 11 October 2020
  6. ↑ "The Permanent Exhibit - Option Pricing in Theory & Practice: The Nobel Prize Research of Robert C. Merton - Exhibits - Historical Collections - Harvard Business School". https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/exhibits/merton/view/. 
  7. ↑ "Too Interconnected to Fail?". https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/econ_focus/2009/summer/pdf/economic_history.pdf. 
  8. ↑ Bodie, Zvi (2003). "Thoughts on the Future: Life-Cycle Investing in Theory and Practice". Financial Analysts Journal 59 (1): 24–29. doi:10.2469/faj.v59.n1.2500. ISSN 0015-198X. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4480448. Retrieved 27 March 2023. 
  9. ↑ Pechter, Kerry (January 28, 2021). "How to Solve the World's Retirement Crisis". Retirement Income Journal. https://retirementincomejournal.com/article/how-to-solve-the-global-retirement-crisis/. 
  10. ↑ Gray, Dale F.; Merton, Robert C.; Bodie, Zvi (November 2007). New Framework for Measuring and Managing Macrofinancial Risk and Financial Stability. National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w13607. https://www.nber.org/papers/w13607. Retrieved 27 March 2023. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 "Robert C. Merton" (in en). https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/robert-c-merton. 
  12. ↑ "Robert King Merton". https://www.asanet.org/robert-k-merton/. 
  13. ↑ Faculty research Department (2008). "Biography – Robert C. Merton". Harvard Business School. http://dor.hbs.edu/fi_redirect.jhtml?facInfo=bio&facEmId=rmerton&loc=extn. 
  14. ↑ "Robert C. Merton - Faculty & Research" (in en). https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6511. 
  15. ↑ "Nobel laureate Robert C. Merton PhD '70 rejoins MIT Sloan faculty" (in en). MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. June 17, 2010. https://news.mit.edu/2010/merton. 
  16. ↑ Garcia-Feijóo, Luis; Siegel, Laurence B.; Kohn, Timothy R. (2020) (in en). Robert C. Merton and the Science of Finance: A Collection. CFA Institute Research Foundation. ISBN 978-1-944960-07-0. https://books.google.com/books?id=AY7zDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT6. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "Past Presidents". https://afajof.org/past-presidents/. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 "Robert C. Merton". http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/64206.html. 
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Vane, Howard R.; Mulhearn, Chris (December 6, 2017). The Nobel Memorial Laureates in Economics: An Introduction to Their Careers and Main Published Works. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 9781845426897. https://books.google.com/books?id=tXsAAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA256. Retrieved December 6, 2017. 
  20. ↑ Lo, Andrew W.; Merton, Robert C. (5 December 2009). "Preface to the Annual Review of Financial Economics". Annual Review of Financial Economics 1 (1): 01–17. doi:10.1146/annurev-financial-071808-145225. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-financial-071808-145225. Retrieved 16 September 2021. 
  21. ↑ Lo, Andrew W.; Merton, Robert C. (1 November 2021). "A Look Back and a Way Forward" (in en). Annual Review of Financial Economics 13 (1): v–viii. doi:10.1146/annurev-fe-13-090321-100001. ISSN 1941-1367. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-fe-13-090321-100001. Retrieved 27 January 2022. 
  22. ↑ Hittleman, Margo (19 August 1997). "Robert Jarrow is cited as one of the world's leading finance theorists". Cornell Chronicle. http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/cornell-management-expert-named-financial-engineer-year. "Past recipients of the Financial Engineer of the Year award include Robert Merton (Harvard), Fischer Black, Mark Rubinstein (Berkeley) and Stephen Ross (Yale)." 
  23. ↑ Persson, Torsten (2003) (in en). Economic Sciences, 1996-2000. World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-02-4961-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=6zjTc0SR--oC&pg=PA77. 
  24. ↑ Read, C. (7 June 2012) (in en). The Rise of the Quants: Marschak, Sharpe, Black, Scholes and Merton. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-02614-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=XSkElfR6kIIC&pg=PT120. 
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Wright, Karen. "Fellow Program". http://www.fma.org/fellow-program. 
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 "CFA Institute Awards". https://www.cfainstitute.org/-/media/documents/corporate-record/award-recipients.pdf. 
  27. ↑ Goodkin, Michael. The Wrong Answer Faster: The Inside Story of Making the Machine that Trades Trillions. John Wiley & Sons, 2012
  28. ↑ Sears, Steven (8 July 2017). "A Good Time for Caution in the Markets". Barron's. https://www.barrons.com/articles/a-good-time-for-caution-in-the-markets-1499489952. 
  29. ↑ Edwards, Franklin R. (1999). "Hedge Funds and the Collapse of Long-Term Capital Management". The Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (2): 189–210. doi:10.1257/jep.13.2.189. ISSN 0895-3309. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2647125. 
  30. ↑ "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1997" (in en-US). https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1997/merton/biographical/. 
  31. ↑ "Robert Merton" (in en). https://cepr.org/about/people/robert-merton. 
  32. ↑ Merton, Robert C. (1973). "Theory of Rational Option Pricing". Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science (The RAND Corporation) 4 (1): 141–183. doi:10.2307/3003143. 
  33. ↑ "Robert C. Merton - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School". http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/m/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6511. 
  34. ↑ Robert A. Jarrow Speech in Honor of Robert C. Merton 1999 Mathematical Finance Day Lifetime Achievement Award . bu.edu. April 25, 1999
  35. ↑ "- American Finance Association". http://www.afajof.org/details/page/3720801/Fellows.html. 
  36. ↑ "Baker Library: About the Merton Exhibit". June 7, 2008. http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/exhibits/merton/about.htm. 
  37. ↑ "MIT SHASS: News - 2009 - Merton receives Muh Award". https://shass.mit.edu/news/news-2009-merton-receives-muh-award. 
  38. ↑ "The NBER Reporter 2011 Number 1: News". http://www.nber.org/reporter/2011number1/news.html. 
  39. ↑ The Kolmogorov Lecture and Medal . Kolmogorov.clrc.rhul.ac.uk (November 13, 2009). Retrieved on January 29, 2012.
  40. ↑ Dublin, Trinity News and Events, Trinity College (November 23, 2010). "TCD Mathematics Student Wins Hamilton Prize 2010". http://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/tcd-mathematics-student-wins-hamilton-prize-2010/1601. 
  41. ↑ "CME Group's 2014 Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award - CME Group". http://www.cmegroup.com/company/center-for-innovation/melamed-arditti-innovation-award-winner-2014.html. 
  42. ↑ "WFE to award the 2013 WFE Award for Excellence to Nobel Laureates Robert C. Merton and Myron S. Scholes". https://www.world-exchanges.org/home/index.php/news/world-exchange-news/wfe-to-award-the-2013-wfe-award-for-excellence-to-nobel-laureates-robert-c-merton-and-myron-s-scholes. 
  43. ↑ "Archived copy". http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/conferences/firsprogram/FIRS2014Program.pdf. 
  44. ↑ "VII Congreso de Investigación Financiera IMEF 2017". http://www.imef-eventos.org.mx/2017/fundacion/congreso/programa_general.php. 
  45. ↑ "PSCA Honors Nancy Gerrie and Robert C. Merton with Lifetime Achievement Awards". American Retirement Association. April 5, 2022. https://www.usaretirement.org/psca-honors-nancy-gerrie-and-robert-c-merton-lifetime-achievement-awards. 

External links

Awards
Preceded by
James A. Mirrlees
William Vickrey 		Laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
1997
Served alongside: Myron S. Scholes 		Succeeded by
Amartya Sen



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