Papers I Remember

Graham Pickersgill

@gpicks58

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These are the ones that survived both the actuarial exams and a few too many wet afternoons in Chorlton beer gardens. Not a grand theory of everything, just the papers I still end up quoting when someone bangs on about risk, cars, or how computers will definitely replace us this time. Think of it as my glovebox bibliography.

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Papers I Remember — 3 items
Name	Paper	Authors	Field	Key idea	Year	My take
1Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk	Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk	Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky	Behavioral economics / decision theory	People value gains and losses asymmetrically and don’t actually follow expected utility theory when facing risk.	1979	Explains half of insurance buying behaviour and about three quarters of pub arguments about excesses and no-claims bonuses.
2The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities	The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities	Fischer Black, Myron Scholes	Financial economics	Introduces the Black–Scholes model, showing how to price options via continuous-time hedging and arbitrage arguments.	1973	The first time I saw the PDE I thought, ‘Fair enough, I’ll just stay in motor claims.’ Still, it’s the backbone of half the spreadsheets in the City.
3Portfolio Selection	Portfolio Selection	Harry Markowitz	Finance / risk management	Formalises diversification and the efficient frontier, showing that risk and return have to be managed at portfolio level, not asset by asset.	1952	Basically says ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ but with enough matrices that everyone suddenly took it seriously.