Nobel recipient talks retirement

Author: Polly Johnson

Last Friday, Oct. 6, Middlebury played host to 1990 Nobel Prize recipient William F. Sharpe, who delivered the Carpenter and Alan R. Holmes Lecture entitled, "Financing Retirement: Saving, Investing, Spending and Insuring."

Sharpe, a professor emeritus of finance at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, held positions at several prestigious universities before joining the Stanford faculty.

Sharpe focused mainly on the changing nature of retirement practices and the ways in which the system would change in coming years. "He discussed the problems that the U.S. is likely to have in savings and investing because of demographic changes in the country," said CA Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics David Colander.

In 1990, Sharpe received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for the new ways of approaching economic problems. He developed the Sharpe Ratio for investment performance analysis, and was one of the originators of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. He co-founded Financial Engines, a company that provides investment advice and management for individuals.

This fall, Sharpe will release a new book entitled Investors and Markets, in which he will seek to demystify techniques for asset-price analysis. Students in attendance were impressed with the lecture. Dana Weissman '07 said, "What I took away from the speech is that it is never too early to start planning for retirement."