How Four Nobel Laureates Got Lucky

An award-winning study shows the importance of luck versus talent

Stephen Foerster
10 min readOct 17, 2022

image of dice
Photo by Edge2Edge Media on Unsplash

Every October, prominent academics in their ivory towers silently wonder if this could be their year, to capture the most prestigious accolade of all, a Nobel Prize. The announcements are followed by black-tie events in Stockholm in December. Less well known is a ceremony that has taken place…

Stephen Foerster

I’m a Finance prof, CFA, and author of In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio (with Andrew Lo). I write stories about investing. (I don’t give financial advice.)