Richard Sandor: Inventing markets out of thick air

摘要

In 1969 Richard Sandor was teaching economics in the graduate business department at the University of California at Berkeley. Even then he was forward thinking, teaching a course on futures at a time when futures, if addressed at all, would be taught in some agricultural economics course. Sandor would have expert guest lecturers address the class and one of his guest lectures was Warren Lebeck, who was a vice president of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). That was the start of a relationship that would last several decades, with Sandor eventually becoming chief economist at the CBOT and creating the first futures on interest rates. Sandor would go on to create financial contracts that today compose the core volumes for the exchange.