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Eugene Fama, Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, received the inaugural Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics at a ceremony in Frankfurt on October 6. The prize is awarded by the Center for Financial Studies and the Goethe University Frankfurt.
In his opening remarks, Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Group Executive Committee, Deustche Bank AG referred to Fama as "the man who launched modern finance.” So it’s very fitting he was the first recipient of the award given to “an individual of international renown who’s made influential contributions to research in the fields of finance and macroeconomics, and whose work has led to practice and policy-relevant results.”
Fama’s financial research is well known in both the economics and investment community. He’s strongly identified with research in the stock market, particularly with regard to the random walk theory and the efficient market hypothesis.
Ackermann went on to describe Fama as someone who "does not work in the ivory tower. He explains real world phenomena." Noting his research and its influence, Ackermann pointed out that Fama "continuously challenges previous insight.”
Fama acknowledged the Deutsche Bank Prize by stating “no field of economics has had such a great impact (as finance).” When it came to his own work, Fama identified his “strength is coming up with simple techniques for solving empirical problems."
Fama is chairman of the Center for Research in Security Prices at Chicago GSB. The center was created more than 40 years ago to track, measure, and analyze securities data.
He teaches Theory of Financial Decisions, a PhD-level course that is meant to be accessible to the motivated Chicago GSB MBA student. The course covers models for portfolio decisions by investors and the pricing of securities in capital markets.