Myron Scholes
Myron Scholes
Myron Samuel Scholesis a Canadian-American financial economist. In 1997 he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for a method to determine the value of derivatives. The model provides a conceptual framework for valuing options, such as calls or puts, and is referred to as the Black–Scholes model. Together with fellow Nobel prize winner Robert C. Merton he founded the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management which dramatically collapsed in 1998...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth1 July 1941
CountryCanada
Building a road might create temporary jobs, but does it really create wealth if it doesn't also shorten commute times or otherwise make society better off?
I think in our global economy, uncertainty is ever increasing. So to accommodate to that, we need to build a dynamic economy and dynamic rules that can adapt to changing circumstances.
From an early age I was very, very fascinated by uncertainty.
Keynesian modelling relies on marginal propensity to consume and marginal propensity to invest. The idea that if we give more money to the poor, they have a propensity to consume that's much higher than the wealthy, though I wish they would talk to my wife about that; she seems to have a propensity to consume.
My view is that one should diversify broadly across different fund investments. However, it's tough for investors to try to pick the appropriate risk level that they should manage their funds at. Having a personal adviser would be helpful.
If someone says to you, 'Go to an old-folks' home,' that's kind of ridiculous, because a lot of old people are doing terrific things for society.
The experience of the '90s, whether it's the '94 peso crisis or the '97 crisis in Asia, the '98 crisis, even the 2001 crisis, is that we recovered pretty readily. There wasn't great consequence.
Most of the time, your risk management works. With a systemic event such as the recent shocks following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, obviously the risk-management system of any one bank appears, after the fact, to be incomplete. We ended up where banks couldn't liquidate their risk, and the system tended to freeze up.
My first reaction on being awarded the Nobel Prize was, actually, I thought of Fischer Black, my colleague. He unfortunately had passed away. And there was no doubt in my mind that if he were still alive, he would have been a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize.
Tax incentives might spur hiring in the short run, but how lasting are those gains if the jobs expire with the tax credits and they come at the expense of investing in the new technologies of the future?
All models have faults - that doesn't mean you can't use them as tools for making decisions.
My career in academic research has not been involved with active management of securities. I've tried to understand risk-and-return relationships; also the pricing of derivative securities.
A bank needs models to measure risk. The problem, however, is that any one bank can measure its risk, but it also has to know what the risk taken by other banks in the system happens to be at any particular moment.
I was involved with Wells Fargo Bank as a consultant in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I suggested to them that they develop a product that has become known as index funds.