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Franco Modigliani

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Franco Modigliani
Born(1918-06-18)June 18, 1918
Rome, Italy
DiedSeptember 25, 2003(2003-09-25) (aged 85)
Cambridge, Massachusetts
NationalityItalian, American
Academic career
FieldFinancial economics
School or
tradition		Neo-Keynesian economics Chicago School of economics Carnegie School
Alma materNew School
Doctoral
advisor		Jacob Marschak[1]
Abba Lerner[1]
Doctoral
students		Albert Ando
John Hayhurst Hand
Robert Shiller
Mario Draghi
Charles Steindel
InfluencesJ. M. Keynes, Jacob Marschak
ContributionsModigliani–Miller theorem
Life-cycle hypothesis
MPS model
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Franco Modigliani (Italian: [ˈfraŋko modiʎˈʎani]; June 18, 1918 – September 25, 2003) was an Italian economist naturalized American, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and MIT Department of Economics who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1985.

Life and career

Born in Rome, Modigliani left Italy because of his Jewish origin and antifascist views. He first went to Paris with the family of his then-girlfriend, Serena, whom he married in 1939, and then to the United States. From 1942 to 1944, he taught at Columbia University and Bard College as an instructor in economics and statistics. In 1944, he obtained his D. Soc. Sci. from the New School for Social Research working under Jacob Marschak. In 1946, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and in 1948, he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty.

When he was a professor at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration of Carnegie Mellon University in the 1950s and early 1960s, Modigliani made two path-breaking contributions to economic science:

  • Along with Merton Miller, he formulated the important Modigliani–Miller theorem in corporate finance (1958). This theorem demonstrated that under certain assumptions, the value of a firm is not affected by whether it is financed by equity (selling shares) or debt (borrowing money).
  • He was also the originator of the life-cycle hypothesis, which attempts to explain the level of saving in the economy. Modigliani proposed that consumers would aim for a stable level of consumption throughout their lifetime, for example by saving during their working years and spending during their retirement.
  • He has claimed that the Rational Expectations Hypothesis REH rests in his and Emile Grunberg's paper.[2] He has also used the concept Macro Rational Expectations Hypothesis MREH.[3]

In 1962, he joined the faculty at MIT, achieving distinction as an Institute Professor, where he stayed until his death. In 1985 he received MIT's James R. Killian Faculty Achievement Award.[4]

Modigliani also co-authored the textbooks, "Foundations of Financial Markets and Institutions" and "Capital Markets: Institutions and Instruments" with Frank J. Fabozzi of Yale School of Management.

In the 1990s he teamed up with Francis Vitagliano to work on a new credit card, and he also helped to oppose changes to a patent law that would be harmful to inventors.

He is the co-author of Rethinking Pension Reform (2009), Cambridge University Press, and along with Arun Muralidhar, critiqued the privatization model of Social Security reform proposed by the World Bank (in the 1990s) and President Bush in the early 2000s, and offered a better alternative to reform Social Security systems globally.

Modigliani was a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security.

A collection of Modigliani's papers is housed at the Rubenstein Library at Duke University.[5]

He received an honoris causa degree in Management Engineering from University of Naples Federico II in 1997. For many years, he lived in Belmont, Massachusetts; he died in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bibliography

Books

  • Modigliani, Franco; Abel, Andrew B.; Johnson, Simon (1980). The Collected Papers of Franco Modigliani. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-13150-1.
  • Modigliani, Franco; Fabozzi, Frank J. (1996). Capital Markets: Institutions and Instruments. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-300187-3.
  • Modigliani, Franco; Fabozzi, Frank J.; Ferri, Michael G. (1998). Foundations of Financial Markets and Institutions. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-686056-7.
  • Modigliani, Franco (2001). Adventures of an Economist. London, New York: Texere. ISBN 1-58799-007-5.
  • Modigliani, Franco; Muralidhar, Arun (2004). Rethinking Pension Reform. London: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521676533.

Journal articles

See also

References

Franco Modigliani and Arun Muralidhar, "Rethinking Pension Reform," Cambridge University Press, London, UK, 2004

  1. ^ a b Franco Modigliani and the Socialist State
  2. ^ Breit, William; Spencer, Roger W. (1990). Lives of the Laureates: Ten Nobel Economists. MIT Press.
  3. ^ The Monetarist Controversy Or, Should We Forsake Stabilization Policies? American Economic Association 1976.
  4. ^ Fabozzi, Frank J.; Frank J. Jones; Franco Modigliani (2010). Foundations of Financial Markets and Institutions (Fourth Edition). Pearson Education, Inc. pp. Dedication. ISBN 0-13-613531-5.
  5. ^ "Franco Modigliani Papers, 1936–2005 and undated, bulk 1970s–2003". Rubenstein Library, Duke University.
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