This article is about the economist. For the sociologist, see Robert K. Merton. This article is about the sociologist. ...

Robert Carhart Merton (born July 31, 1944), a leading scholar in the field of finance, was one of three men who, in the early 1970s, developed the mathematics of the stock options markets. Merton published a paper on the subject simultaneous with the publication of another paper, reaching essentially the same conclusions, by Fischer Black and Myron S. Scholes. July 31 is the 212th day (213th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 153 days remaining, as the final day of July. ... 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Finance studies and addresses the ways in which individuals, businesses and organizations raise, allocate and use monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects. ... This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. ... Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space and change. ... A stock option is a specific type of option with a stock as the underlying instrument (the security that the value of the option is based on). ... Fischer Black (1938 - August 30, 1995) was an American economist. ... Myron S. Scholes (born July 1, 1941) is one of the authors of the famous Black-Scholes equation. ...

It is somewhat unfair to Merton that the resulting formula has ever since been known as Black-Scholes, but with another hyphen the label would be unwieldy. The Black-Scholes model, often simply called Black-Scholes, is a model of the varying price over time of financial instruments, and in particular stocks. ...

He wrote a hugely successful book: Continous-time Finance.

Merton and Scholes received The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their work on stock options, in 1997, after Fischer Black's death. The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences (Swe. ... 1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

In 2002, Merton threw himself into the public controversy over how corporations ought to account for the stock options they often award as parts of a compensation package. Existing rules do not require that these options be treated as an expense when issued, and some economists suspect that the practice of keeping this particular form of compensation off the balance sheet contributed to the 1990s bubble in the value of dot-coms and telecoms. Merton himself is among the advocates of stock options expensing. 2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In formal bookkeeping and accounting, a balance sheet is a statement of the financial value (or worth) of a business or other organisation (or person) at a particular date, usually at the end of its fiscal year, as distinct from a profit and loss statement (P&L, also known as... // Events and trends The 1990s are generally classified as having moved slightly away from the more conservative 1980s, but keeping the same mind-set. ... A stock market bubble is a type of economic bubble taking place in stock markets, in which a wave of public enthusiasm, evolving into herd behavior, causes an exaggerated bull market . ... Dot-com (also dotcom or redundantly dot. ...

Merton is also the son of Robert K. Merton, a distinguished sociologist perhaps best known for having coined the phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy." This article is about the sociologist. ... Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. ...

Merton was born in New York, New York and received his Bachelor of Science degree from the School of Engineering and Applied Science of Columbia University. He is currently a professor at Harvard University and has also been on the faculty at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Myron Scholes and Robert Merton were on the board of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund company founded by John Meriwether that folded in 1998. Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the state of New York and the entire United States. ... Columbia University is a private university in New York City. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... The Sloan School of Management, one of the five schools of MIT, is one of the worlds leading business schools. ... Long-Term Capital Management was a hedge fund company founded by John Meriwether (a former bond trader at Salomon Brothers bank) in 1994 and with Nobel Prize winners Myron Scholes and Robert Merton on the board. ... John Meriwether was a securities trader at Salomon Brothers. ... 1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...

See also

• Robert Merton's homepage at the Harvard Business School
• List of economists
• List of economics consultancies and think tanks
• new method to determine the value of derivatives.