Franco Modigliani

An Italian-American Keynesian economist. Modigliani was born in 1918 in Rome and won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1985. One of Modigliani's contributions to economics was the life-cycle theory, which says that individuals primarily save money during their early years to pay for their later years, not to pass on wealth to their children. His other major contribution, in cooperation with Merton Miller, was the Modigliani-Miller theroem, which formed the foundation for capital structure analysis in corporate finance.

Modigliani served as president of the American Economic Association, the American Finance Association and the American Econometric Society. He also served as an advisor to Italian banks and politicians, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve System and a number of European banks.