Introduction

Abstract

The birth of finance as a modern academic discipline can be dated from the publication, in 1952, of Harry Markowitz’s pathbreaking article on the risk return tradeoff and portfolio selection. Subsequently, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was awarded to six scholars—Franco Modigliani, Harry Markowitz, Merton Miller, William Sharpe, Robert Merton, and Myron Scholes—all of whom have provided seminal insights into risk analysis and contributed to the development and recognition of finance as an academic discipline capable of fruitful application in practice. (We sadly note, as did the 1997 Nobel Committee, that Fischer Black did not live to share the honor.)