Franco Modigliani

Italian-born American economist and finance educator who received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1985 for his work on household savings and the dynamics of financial markets. The son of a Jewish physician, Modigliani initially studied law but fled Fascist Italy in 1939 for the United States, in which country he became a naturalized citizen in 1946. He studied economics at the New School for Social Research and obtained his doctorate there in 1944. Modigliani went on to hold teaching positions at a number of American universities, notably the post of professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1962 on. Modigliani received the Nobel Prize for his pioneering research in several fields of economic theory that had practical applications. One of these was his analysis of personal savings, termed the life-cycle theory. The theory posits that individuals build up a store of wealth during their younger working lives for the purpose of consuming these savings d