Fischer Black prize is awarded to a person to a financial scientist for a body of work that demonstrates significant original research that is relevant to finance practice.

Fischer Black Prize is a memorial prize awarded in honor of Fischer Black that rewards individual financial research. The prize was established in 2002 and first awarded in 2003. Eligible scholars must either be below 40 years in age, or under age 45 but not have been awarded a Ph.D. (or equivalent) by age 35. The prize is awarded biennially at the American Finance Association’s Annual Meeting.This award to honor a leading young finance scholar is analogous to the John Bates Clark Medal in economics and the Fields Medal in mathematics.

The award honors Fischer Black, a former General Partner at Goldman Sachs and Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among Black’s notable research accomplishments was the development (with Myron Scholes) of the Black–Scholes option pricing model. The awardee is chosen for having a body of research that embodies the Fischer Black hallmark of developing original research In years where no such candidate meets the rigorous standards, as was the case in 2005, no award is presented.

The Fischer Black Prize is one of two biennial awards presented by the American Finance Association (the other is the Morgan Stanley-American Finance Association Award For Excellence In Finance) in alternating years at its annual conference to scholars for bodies of research. The Association also awards two annual awards for individual research publications at its conference (Smith Breeden Prize and Brattle Prize).

The American Finance Association’s 2019 Fischer Black Prize is awarded to Professor Ralph Koijen of the University of Chicago. The prize is awarded to the person under 40 whose work best exemplifies the Fischer Black hallmark of developing original research that is relevant to finance practice.

Raghuram Rajan, the Joseph L. Gidwitz Professor of Finance in the Graduate School of Business, has been awarded the inaugural Fischer Black Prize from the American Finance Association.

Rajan’s Ph.D. thesis pointed out the downside to cozy bank-firm relationships long before these became apparent in detailed studies of systems like Japan’s. His recent theoretical work with Douglas Diamond, the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance in the GSB, knits together the microtheory of banking with macroeconomic theory. Their research promotes greater understanding of the role banks play in the provision of liquidity, why this function makes banks so prone to systemic crises, and why changes in monetary policy have such a significant effect on bank lending.