Fraud, Lies, and Statistics

Edward E. Williams and John A. Dobelman

Chapter 1 in A Random Walk to Nowhere:How the Professors Caused a Real “Fraud-on-the-Market”, 2020, pp 1-16 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: As mentioned in the Preface, one of the authors (Edward E. Williams) and M. Chapman Findlay published a controversial article in 1980 titled “A Positivist Evaluation of the New Finance.” It was intended to be a spoof on Milton Friedman’s concept of positivism which will be a major concern in this book. They presented the paper in 1978 at an academic conference, and they knew at the time that they were venturing into treacherous waters. Nevertheless, the article was one of the most read in the journal that published it for many years. Basically, the article called into question what had been going on in academic finance for the previous two decades, i.e., the introduction of the “scientific method” to finance (or what was soon becoming “financial economics”)…

Keywords: Efficient Market Hypothesis; Market Inefficiency; Mathematical Economics; Academic Finance; Real-World Markets; Fraud; Random Walk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B26 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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