Myths of financial markets being essentially well-functioning and efficient die hard. We need to radically change the way finance is taught.
It was a French mathematician, Louis Bachelier, who pioneered mathematical finance in the early 20th century. Today, it is another French professor of quantitative finance at the University of Zurich, Marc Chesney, who seriously questions modern financial theories.
His main concern is about finance education, which is where future bankers, traders, managers and investors draw their working assumptions from. «The academic world didn’t sufficiently learn the lessons from the 2007-2008 financial crisis, remaining very low key in front of repeated financial scandals. Yet responsibility rests on academia to analyze these issues with objectivity, if academic freedom is to have any meaning».