Merton H. Miller

Merton Howard Miller (1923–2000) was an American economist whose work reshaped the modern theory of corporate finance. He shared the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Harry Markowitz and William Sharpe for foundational contributions to financial economics.

Miller was born in Boston and earned his bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1944. After wartime service as an economist at the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve, he completed his doctorate at Johns Hopkins in 1952. He taught at the London School of Economics and at Carnegie Institute of Technology before joining the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago in 1961, where he remained for the rest of his academic life.

With Franco Modigliani he formulated the Modigliani–Miller theorems, published in 1958 and 1961, which showed that under idealised conditions a firm's market value is independent of its capital structure and dividend policy. The propositions reframed how economists analyse leverage, taxes, and financial distress, and they remain the starting point of every corporate-finance textbook.

Miller served as a public director of the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and wrote extensively in defence of derivatives markets after the 1987 stock-market crash and the 1995 Barings collapse. His later books include Merton Miller on Derivatives and Financial Innovations and Market Volatility. He continued teaching at Chicago Booth until shortly before his death.

The given name Merton is an English habitational surname turned forename, from Old English mere 'pool' and tūn 'settlement'. It became fashionable in nineteenth-century America as a refined boys' name. He carried it as a reminder of the New England tradition into which he was born.