Miller, Merton H.

Merton Howard Miller (1923-2000) was an economist who won the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking research in corporate finance (1990). Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Miller attended Harvard University (A.B., 1944). In the mid- to late 1940s, Miller worked as an economist for the United States Treasury Department's Division of Tax Research, and the Division of Research and Statistics of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1952, mentored by Fritz Machlup. After graduation from Johns Hopkins, Miller briefly held an appointment at the London School of Economics as an assistant lecturer in American economic history. In 1953, he moved on to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University), where he began working with Franco Modigliani on a series of papers on corporate finance. In 1961, Miller accepted a position at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. Miller was active in professional organizations, serving as president of the American Finance Association, on the advisory and editorial boards of several academic publications and organizations. Late in his career, Miller consulted for banks and corporations, and held directorial positions at the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange.