Robert Merton & Agustín Carstens on Finance as Information

The fast-changing world of digital data holds the promise of financial markets that are profoundly better informed. This information revolution is especially exciting when it supports new financial instruments and wider access to financial markets.

Join us for a live webinar on Finance as Information with Robert Merton, Professor at MIT and Nobel Laureate in Economic Science and Agustin Carstens, General Manager of the BIS. Our two eminent panelists will depict how they see the financial markets changing and the role central banks may play in the process. This event is moderated by our own Professor Eli Remolona and is part of our Conversations on Central Banking series.

 

About the Panelists

Robert Merton - School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance, MIT. Nobel Memorial Prize Winner in Economic Sciences. Co-chair, ASB Master of Central Banking Advisory Council

Robert C. Merton is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at MIT Sloan School of Management, and the John and Natty McArthur University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. After receiving a PhD in Economics from MIT in 1970, Merton served on the finance faculty of MIT’s Sloan School of Management until 1988, at which time he was the J.C. Penney Professor of Management.

Merton received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new method to determine the value of derivatives. He is past president of the American Finance Association, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Merton received the inaugural Financial Engineer of the Year Award from the International Association for Quantitative Finance, which also elected him a Senior Fellow. Merton received Risk’s Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to the field of risk management and the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Financial Intermediation Research Society.

His research focuses on finance theory, including lifecycle and retirement finance, optimal portfolio selection, capital asset pricing, pricing of derivative securities, credit risk, loan guarantees, financial innovation, the dynamics of institutional change, and improving the methods of measuring and managing macro-financial systemic risk.


Agustín Carstens - General Manager of BIS & Former Governor of Bank of Mexico
 

Agustín Carstens became General Manager of the BIS on 1 December 2017. He holds an MA and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.

Mr Carstens was Governor of the Bank of Mexico from 2010 to 2017. A member of the BIS Board from 2011 to 2017, he was chair of the Global Economy Meeting and the Economic Consultative Council from 2013 until 2017. He also chaired the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the IMF's policy advisory committee from 2015 to 2017. He began his career in 1980 at the Bank of Mexico. From 1999 to 2000, he was Executive Director at the IMF. He later served as Mexico’s deputy finance minister (2000–03) and as Deputy Managing Director at the IMF (2003–06). He was Mexico's finance minister from 2006 to 2009.

Mr Carstens has been a member of the Financial Stability Board since 2010 and is a member of the Group of Thirty.