My Life in Finance

by Eugene F. Fama

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.

26 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 5, 2011

About the author

Eugene Francis "Gene" Fama (/ˈfɑːmə/; born February 14, 1939) is an American economist, best known for his empirical work on portfolio theory, asset pricing, and the efficient-market hypothesis.