The Masters of Finance: Ideas from the field

This comment illustrates how direct empirical study, that is, field observation and participation by academics, contributed to the understanding of practice and the early development of modern finance theory. The discussion is supported by publicly available narrative accounts from the American Finance Association historical interviews with the ‘Masters of Finance’ (2004–2010). We argue that academic finance, in the early years of the field’s development, was very closely connected to practice, that is, ideas and theories were generated and tested in the field.