Robert Merton, a Nobel laureate in economics who helped shape modern finance theory, will return to MIT Sloan School of Management next month as a member of its finance faculty. Merton, who earned his Ph. D. at Sloan and taught there for 18 years, has been at Harvard Business School for the past 22 years.
“I started my professional life at MIT, and did my most influential work there,” Merton said in a statement. “Now, as the world begins to rebuild its financial infrastructure from the ashes of this economic crisis, I believe MIT is primely positioned to play a leadership role in shaping the future through its research and educational programs. I feel it is the right time to return.”
Merton first came to MIT as a graduate student in the 1960s to study under the late Paul Samuelson, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Merton won the Nobel Prize himself in 1997 for a new method he devised to determine the value of derivatives, research he published during his early years at Sloan.
Andrew Lo, Sloan finance professor and director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, credits Merton for making finance come alive for him when he was his student. “Much of the Sloan School’s ‘franchise’ in finance is attributable to him,” Lo said in a statement. “Even after 22 years here at MIT, I still feel like a houseguest in the house that Bob Merton built,” he continued.
Merton’s current academic work focuses on macro financial risk. As part of his research, he has worked to design financial instruments for the automatic stabilization of central banks and improve methods of measuring and managing sovereign risk. He is also working on a next-generation retirement savings system to address the enormous challenge an aging global population is placing on government budgets and national economies.
Upon returning to Sloan in July, Merton will teach mainly in the school’s Master of Finance program, launched last year. He also will lead conferences and executive education seminars for senior managers and regulators.
To learn more about Bob Merton’s return to MIT Sloan, click here.
Read the full article: Economics Nobel Laureate Returns to MIT Sloan School of Management Faculty