Myron Scholes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Myron S. Scholes is one of the authors of the famous Black-Scholes equation. In 1997 he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for "a new method to determine the value of derivatives." The model provides the fundamental conceptual framework for valuing options, such as calls or puts, and is referred to as the Black-Scholes model, which has become the standard in financial markets globally. Trillions of dollars of options trades are executed each year using this model and derivations thereof. All binomial option models have evolved from this original concept.

He earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in 1962. At the University of Chicago, he earned an MBA in 1964 and a Ph.D. in 1969. He co-founded the ill-fated Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1994. He is currently a professor at Stanford University and has also been on the faculty at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

In 2005, Scholes was implicated in the case of Long-Term Capital Holdings v. United States, where he attempted to invest funds from his company, Long-Term Capital Holdings, in an illegal tax shelter in order to avoid having to pay taxes on profits from company investments. It was found that Scholes and his partners were not eligible for $106 million in tax deductions they had claimed. Additionally, they were fined more than $40 million by the IRS.