<span>“de Finetti Scoops Markowitz” A&nbsp;Tribute&nbsp;to&nbsp;Bruno/Fulvia de Finetti, Harry&nbsp;Markowitz, Mark Rubinstein</span>

<div> <div> <p><i><span>This note is a tribute to Bruno de Finetti (who was born in Innsbruck on June 13, 1906, and died in Rome on July 20, 1985), Mark Rubinstein (who passed away 5 years ago, on May 9, 2019), Harry Markowitz (who passed away 2 years ago, on June 22, 2023) and to Fulvia de Finetti (the daughter of Bruno de Finetti who passed away this year, on an uncertain day of January 2024).</span></i></p> <p><i><span>“de Finetti Scoops Markowitz” is the title of an article written by Harry Markowitz, Nobel Prize winner for Economics in 1990. The scoop in question concerns an old work by Bruno de Finetti, one of the greatest Italian academics of the 20th century. Markowitz credits de Finetti with anticipating many of his ideas on portfolio selection by more than a decade.</span></i></p> <p><i><span>In 2006, Mark Rubinstein wrote that he “learned about de Finetti’s earlier work from Claudio Albanese, Professor of Mathematical Finance at Imperial College London ... Claudio, in turn, had learned of it from Francesco Corielli, Professor of Statistics at Bocconi University, who had learned many of the details concerning de Finetti’s work from Flavio Pressacco (who knew de Finetti), now Dean of Economics at the University of Udine.”</span></i></p> <p><i><span>It was Mark Rubinstein who “commissioned” the article from Harry Markowitz. On Friday, January 21, 2005, he wrote to Claudio Albanese, Francesco Corielli, and my son Luca: “I just talked with Harry on the phone; he did not know about this paper and was both quite surprised and quite interested to learn about it. I told him it was written in Italian and he asked me if a translation was available. I said yes it now was (for about half the paper and the most important part). He asked me how long it has been available, and I could dramatically say not until this moment! So I am going email Luca’s translation now to Harry. He says he will need a couple weeks and if everything is as it seems he would probably be happy to write a few page commentary.”</span></i></p> </div> <p></p> <p><i><span>The work by de Finetti to which Rubinstein and Markowitz refer is “Il problema dei «pieni»”, published in 1940. In this work, which is actually a small volume of 88 pages, the author deals with the problem of full-risk insurances, i.e. the optimal method for insurance companies to reinsure their portfolios. The problem of “full-risk insurances” is a complex work, full of anticipatory ideas. A real gem. This helps to explain why Franco Modigliani, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1985 (a few months after de Finetti’s death and 5 years before Markowitz was awarded the Nobel prize) said that de Finetti also deserved the same prize.</span></i></p> </div>