Ben Bernanke
Chairman, The Federal Reserve System (2006-2014)
2014 Recipient of the Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award
Ben S. Bernanke is a Distinguished Fellow in Residence at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. From February 2006 through January 2014, he was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Dr. Bernanke also served as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System's principal monetary policymaking body.
Before his appointment as Chairman, Dr. Bernanke was Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, from June 2005 to January 2006. He had already served the Federal Reserve System in several roles. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2002 to 2005.
From 1994 to 1996, Dr. Bernanke was the Class of 1926 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He was the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and Chair of the Economics Department at the university from 1996 to 2002. Dr. Bernanke had been a Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton since 1985.
Before arriving at Princeton, Dr. Bernanke was an Associate Professor of Economics (1983-85) and an Assistant Professor of Economics (1979-83) at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. His teaching career also included serving as a Visiting Professor of Economics at New York University (1993) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989-90).
Dr. Bernanke has published many articles on a wide variety of economic issues, including monetary policy and macroeconomics, and he is the author of several scholarly books and two textbooks. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Sloan Fellowship, and he is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Bernanke served as the Director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and as a member of the NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee. In July 2001, he was appointed Editor of the American Economic Review. Dr. Bernanke's work with civic and professional groups includes having served two terms as a member of the Montgomery Township (N.J.) Board of Education.
Born in December 1953 in Augusta, Georgia, Dr. Bernanke grew up in Dillon, South Carolina. He received a B.A. in economics in 1975 from Harvard University (summa cum laude) and a Ph.D. in economics in 1979 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is married and has two children.
Dr. Bernanke leveraged his deep knowledge and academic experience to help create a blueprint for navigating the largest financial crisis of our time. The CME Group Center for Innovation is pleased to present Ben Bernanke with the 2014 Melamed-Arditti Innovation award for breakthrough contributions that will shape public understanding of economic issues as well as influence global finance for years to come.
CFI will present Bernanke with the Award as part of the CME Global Financial Leadership Conference on November 18, 2014 where he will also provide a keynote address offering insight and analysis of the current global economic landscape to top customers of CME Group.
"Under Ben’s leadership, we have felt compelled to create a new
playbook for the Fed."
- Kevin Warsh, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System (2006-2011)
"The members of CMAC are proud to bestow this coveted award to Ben Bernanke who as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank faced an unprecedented US and global financial crisis and used his academic scholarship, theory and experience to innovate in order to address the extreme risks faced by the global economy. Our nation is indebted to him for his acumen, courage and steadfastness."
-Leo Melamed, CME Chairman Emeritus and founder of the CME Group Competitive Markets Advisory Council (CMAC)
Learn More about Ben Bernanke’s work
What the Fed did and why: supporting the recovery and sustaining price stability, The Washington Post
Chairman Bernanke's College Lecture Series, The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis
The CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award
The CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award is the signature program of the CME Group Center for Innovation. The award honors an individual or group of individuals whose innovative ideas, products or services have created significant change to markets commerce or trade. The award strives to celebrate innovation in action — not only the creative idea, but also the impact that practical application of the idea has made on improving the economic well-being of individuals, an industry or a nation.
CME Group named this award to honor Leo Melamed for his revolutionary achievements in introducing financial futures instruments to futures markets in 1972, and Fred Arditti, whose achievements in the 1980s developing CME's eurodollar interest rate and weather futures significantly advanced the management of risk in the futures industry. These innovations were instrumental in helping CME Group become the world’s leading derivatives marketplace.
Leo Melamed is recognized as the founder of financial futures. As Chairman of Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), he led the exchange's launch of currency futures with the creation of the International Monetary Market (IMM) in 1972—the first futures market for financial instruments. The introduction of financial futures paved the way for CME's launch of futures contracts on U.S. Treasury Bills, Eurodollars, and stock indexes in the decade that followed. In 1986, Melamed conceptualized CME’s Globex system, the first electronic trading platform for futures and options, and was instrumental in its launch in 1992. Currently Chairman Emeritus of CME Group and Chairman of Strategic Steering, Melamed continues his leadership role to help CME Group advance the world economy.
Fred Arditti developed futures contracts that transformed how businesses and individuals manage risk. Most notably, in 1981 he architected CME Eurodollar futures, the world's most actively traded futures contract today. Later, he was instrumental in strengthening in light of intensive competition in the new century from domestic and international markets. It was during this time that he originated weather futures. After his time at CME, he taught courses in futures and options while serving as a professor of finance at DePaul University in Chicago, as chairman of the University of Florida's Economics Department, and as a visiting professor at several institutions. His book “Derivatives” is the definitive textbook on the subject.
The CME Group Competitive Markets Advisory Council (CMAC), a council of outside advisors originally organized by Nobel Laureates Myron Scholes and Gary Becker in partnership with Leo Melamed in 2004, is responsible for selecting each year's award recipient. John Gould, the Steven G. Rothmeier Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, serves as the council's chairman. Members include David D. Hale, International Economist and Founder, Hale Global Advisors, LLC; Andrew Lo, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor of Finance and Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering, MIT; Robert C. Merton, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist and School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance, MIT; Michael H. Moskow, Vice Chairman and Senior Fellow for the Global Economy, Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former President, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; Myron Scholes, Nobel Laureate and Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, Stanford University; Robert J. Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale University
2013 – Sal Kahn
Founder, Kahn Academy
2012 — Jimmy Wales
Co-Founder, Wikipedia
2010 — David A. Ferrucci
Department Group Manager, Semantic Analysis & Integration, IBM
2011 — Robert Merton
Nobel Prize-Winning Economist and School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance, MIT
2011 — Myron Scholes
Nobel Laureate and Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, Stanford University
2009 — Harry Markowitz
Nobel Prize-Winning Economist
2008 — Michael Bloomberg
Mayor, City of New York
Founder, Bloomberg LP
2007 — Eugene Fama
Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, University of Chicago
2006 — Leo Melamed
Founder of Financial Futures and Chairman Emeritus, CME Group
2005 — William Sharpe
Nobel Prize Winning Economist and STANCO 25 Professor of Finance, Emeritus Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
In 2013, the CMAC unanimously recommended that the award be renamed from the CME Group Fred Arditti Innovation Award to the CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Awardin recognition of Leo Melamed's revolutionary innovation of introducing futures in financial instruments in 1972. Melamed's contributions enabled the creation of effective and efficient global risk management tools through futures markets. These innovations have been copied by financial centers around the world.
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