Robert C. Merton

About

Robert C. Merton is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at MIT Sloan School of Management and the John and Natty McArthur University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He received his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1970 and has served on the finance faculty of MIT’s Sloan School of Management until 1988, where he was the J.C. Penney Professor of Management. Merton has held prominent positions at Harvard Business School, including the George Fisher Baker Professor of Business Administration and the John and Natty McArthur University Professor. His research focuses on finance theory, including lifecycle and retirement finance, optimal portfolio selection, capital asset pricing, pricing of derivative securities, credit risk, financial innovation, and systemic risk measurement and management. He is renowned for developing the Black-Scholes-Merton options pricing model, which revolutionized derivatives valuation, and was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for this work. Merton has also contributed significantly to understanding pensions as a stream of income over a lifetime, emphasizing their role in ensuring continuity in living standards. His work has profoundly impacted the global financial system, and he continues to engage in research on macrofinancial systemic risk, financial innovation, and institutional change.

Research topics

• Economics
• Computer Science
• Business
• Computer Security
• Industrial organization
• Mathematics
• Microeconomics
• Monetary economics
• Finance

Selected publications

• The Role of Contingent Claims Analysis in Corporate Finance

  World Scientific Publishing Company eBooks · 2019-03-01 · 290 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• SeLFIES: A New Pension Bond and Currency for Retirement

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 19 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• SeLFIES Can Help Brazil Create a SUPER Supplementary Pension

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-04-18 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Brazilian policy makers and researchers have discussed the introduction of a complementary pension system to complement the Regime Geral de Previdencia Social (RGPS), specially for those that want a retirement income above the RGPS ceiling. This article first recommends that the complementary system must be SUPER (Simple, Universal, Portable, Efficient with low cost and Robust Regulatation). It then proposes the adoption of a financial innovation called SeLFIES (Standard-of-Living, Forward-start…

  Publisher

• A Six-Component Integrated Approach to Addressing the Retirement Funding Challenge

  Journal of investment management · 2020-01-01 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This paper offers an integrated approach to addressing the global retirement funding challenge, especially in light of the coronavirus shock that has created an unanticipated and unprecedented impact on lifetime income/consumption. It frames the problem in a six-component approach to the funding challenge with an integrated package presented in a transparent, detailed modular fashion, so that any one module can be replaced with a different version and the rest of the system works. This also mean…

  Publisher

• Tendencias y perspectivas de la ciencia financiera: Un artículo de revisión

  Revista Mexicana de Economía y Finanzas · 2020-11-30 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Las contribuciones de Robert C. Merton cobran vigencia actual. Con respecto del diseño de los planes para el retiro, en un marco de sistemas deficientes de pensiones, las investigaciones de Merton (1969) y (1971) sobre reglas óptimas de consumo y portafolio durante y después de la vida laboral cobran vigencia contemporánea. Asimismo, Bodie y Merton (2002) proponen el uso de productos derivados, en el ámbito internacional, para diversificar los riesgos de los sistemas de pensiones justo en el mom…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Zvi Bodie

  53 shared

• Andrew W. Lo

  26 shared

• Richard T. Thakor

  University of Minnesota

  25 shared

• Arun Muralidhar

  15 shared

• Francesco Giavazzi

  12 shared

• Myron S. Scholes

  12 shared

• Dale F. Gray

  International Monetary Fund

  11 shared

• Zoe Tsesmelidakis

  10 shared

Awards & honors

• Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1997)
• Financial Engineer of the Year Award from the International…
• 2011 CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award
• 2013 WFE Award for Excellence from World Federation of Excha…
• Nicholas Molodovsky Award from the CFA Institute

Similar researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Jonathan A. Parkerh-47
• Deborah J. Lucash-42