Portfolio Selection.: Efficent Diversification of Investments.

New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; Chapman & Hall, Ltd, London,, 1959. Risk, diversified First edition, first printing, of the foundational work of modern portfolio theory. The theory - now widely followed by investors and financiers - emphasizes that a diversified portfolio will maximize returns against a given level of risk. Markowitz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1990 alongside Merton Miller and William Sharpe, who subsequently developed the theory. In their announcement, the Swedish Academy of Sciences stated that, "the first pioneering contribution in the field of financial economics was made in the 1950s by Harry Markowitz who developed a theory for households' and firms' allocation of financial assets under uncertainty, the so-called theory of portfolio choice. This theory analyzes how wealth can be optimally invested in assets which differ in regard to their expected return and risk, and thereby also how risks can be reduced... Markowitz showed that under certain given conditions, an investor's portfolio choice can be reduced to balancing two dimensions, i.e., the expected return on the portfolio and its variance... In this way, the complicated and multidimensional problem of portfolio choice with respect to a large number of different assets, each with varying properties, is reduced to a conceptually simple two-dimensional problem – known as mean-variance analysis... Generally speaking, Markowitz's work on portfolio theory may be regarded as having established financial micro analysis as a respectable research area in economic analysis" (16 October 1990 press release, accessible online). Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Diagrams and tables throughout. With "Nov. '59" in pencil to front free endpaper.Very light rubbing, faint toning to spine; slight creasing to jacket, minor toning to spine and extremities, flaps without price as issued: a near-fine copy in like jacket.