Markowitz, Harry

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Harry Markowitz (mär´kəwĬts´), 1927–, American economist, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1954. In the 1950s he developed a theory of "portfolio choice," which allows investors to analyze risk as well as their expected return. For this work Markowitz, a professor at Baruch College at the City Univ. of New York, shared the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with William Sharpe and Merton Miller.