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The passing of Michael J. Brennan marks the loss of one of the great scholars and institution builders in modern financial economics. Michael’s contributions to finance were distinguished by intellectual depth, analytical rigor, and an extraordinary capacity to recognize important questions before they became central to the discipline. Yet among his many accomplishments, one deserves particular recognition: his role in the founding of the Society for Financial Studies (SFS) and his service as the first editor of the Review of Financial Studies (RFS). The journal’s creation was an act of intellectual ambition and professional leadership, and its subsequent success stands as a lasting testament to his vision. Because of Michael and his stature, the RFS emerged almost immediately as one of the most widely recognized journals in finance.

Michael’s career was remarkable for its breadth. His research advanced our understanding of asset pricing, corporate finance, derivative securities, portfolio choice, and the role of information in financial markets. He was equally at home developing formal models and exploring their implications for financial decisions. His work with Eduardo Schwartz on the valuation of bonds and other contingent claims helped shape modern continuous-time finance. He was a pioneer of real options, showing how uncertainty, irreversibility, and managerial flexibility affect the value and timing of corporate investment. His research on asset pricing, portfolio choice, and the informational structure of markets contributed to the theoretical foundations of financial economics. Across these areas, Michael exemplified a style of scholarship that combined mathematical sophistication with a keen appreciation of the economic problems that models were meant to illuminate.

Michael did not confine his influence to his own research. He understood that the development of a discipline depends on the institutions through which ideas are evaluated, disseminated, challenged, and refined. A great journal is not simply a repository of excellent papers. It helps define the questions a field considers important, establishes standards of scholarship, and creates opportunities for new generations of researchers. Michael’s founding editorship of the RFS reflected precisely this broader understanding of academic leadership, as well as his own skills as a scholarly critic, editor, and reviewer.

The origins of the journal are revealing. The decisive step came during the 1986 Western Finance Association (WFA) meetings, in a discussion among Michael Brennan, George Constantinides, Jon Ingersoll, Chester Spatt, and Joseph Williams. Indeed, one of the group observed that somebody should take a picture. This was forty years ago, before we all carried cameras in our phones, and so no picture was taken. The idea was right: it was a moment worth preserving. From that meeting came the determination to create a journal with a distinctive mission—one that would welcome relevant new research without regard to its level of technical difficulty, respond to the interests of younger members of the profession, maintain a rotating editorial board to encourage fresh ideas, and remain independent of any single university or commercial owner. The journal would belong to the profession itself.

These principles were ambitious, but they were also practical. Financial economics was developing rapidly, and its research agenda was expanding. The field needed an outlet that could accommodate theoretical innovation, empirical investigation, and new approaches to longstanding problems. It also needed an editorial structure capable of adapting as the discipline changed. Michael agreed to serve as the first editor, bringing to the undertaking his experience as editor of the Journal of Finance, his scholarly standing, and his understanding of how editorial judgment can shape a research community.

Michael also understood that a new journal would need immediate intellectual credibility. The Founding Committee therefore included some of the most eminent scholars in finance, among them Nils Hakansson, Robert Litzenberger, Robert Merton, Merton Miller, Richard Roll, Stephen Ross, and Myron Scholes, as well as the participants in the 1986 WFA meeting. Their participation gave the new enterprise both counsel and standing. This was characteristic of Michael: he understood the field in many dimensions—not only its ideas, but also its people and the institutional foundations on which lasting scholarly influence depends.

The Society for Financial Studies was incorporated in 1987, and the first issue of the Review of Financial Studies appeared in 1988. Several of us who took part in the journal’s creation also assumed its initial editorial and organizational responsibilities. Joseph Williams served as the Society’s first president, George Constantinides as vice president, Mark Weinstein as secretary-treasurer, and Michael as Executive Editor; Stephen Brown, Michael Gibbons, Jon Ingersoll, and Chester Spatt were the initial Coeditors, the last of whom later succeeded Michael as Executive Editor. The journal’s early success was striking: by 1990, the Society had repaid the funds contributed by its founding supporters. These milestones reflected the strength of the original idea and the determination of those who brought it to fruition. They also demonstrated Michael’s ability to turn an intellectual vision into a durable institution.

The intellectual quality of the early issues was equally remarkable. The very first issue included Anat Admati and Paul Pfleiderer’s theoretical analysis of intraday trading patterns and Andrew Lo and Craig MacKinlay’s empirical rejection of the random-walk hypothesis, as well as important work by Philip Dybvig and by Mark Bagnoli and Barton Lipman. Many papers in the first volumes became familiar and influential contributions. Their range—across theory and empirical work—made tangible the breadth of the journal’s founding mission and helped establish the RFS at the center of the field from the outset.

The significance of Michael’s achievement becomes clearer when one considers the principles embedded in the journal’s founding. The commitment to publishing research regardless of technical difficulty carried with it a recognition that rigor should serve economic understanding rather than be an end in itself. The emphasis on younger scholars acknowledged that the future of a discipline depends on its willingness to hear unfamiliar voices and consider unconventional ideas. The decision to rotate editorial leadership reflected a conviction that no individual, institution, or intellectual school should permanently control the direction of the field.

These principles remain relevant today. Academic disciplines can become conservative in their judgments, and established publication outlets can find it difficult to accommodate ideas that challenge prevailing approaches. Michael helped create an institution designed to resist that tendency. The RFS was intended to be demanding without being narrow, intellectually ambitious without being doctrinaire, and independent without being detached from the profession it served. Its subsequent development confirms how successful that vision was.

Michael’s own scholarship reinforced these commitments. His work demonstrated that financial economics could be both technically sophisticated and economically consequential. Across asset pricing, derivative securities, corporate finance, market microstructure, and real options, he repeatedly identified structures that made difficult problems tractable without stripping away their economic content. His contributions reflected a consistent willingness to move beyond familiar boundaries and investigate problems from new directions.

His professional leadership was equally distinguished. Michael served as president of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, and the Society for Financial Studies. He served as editor of two of the leading journals in the discipline, the Journal of Finance and the Review of Financial Studies. These roles were not merely honors bestowed on an accomplished scholar. They reflected the confidence his colleagues placed in his judgment and his commitment to advancing the profession as a whole.

Yet the most enduring measure of an academic life is not a list of publications, offices, or awards. It is the influence one has on other scholars and on the intellectual environment in which they work. Michael’s legacy is present in the research that his work inspired, the students and colleagues he influenced, and the institutions he helped establish. Every generation of finance scholars that submits work to the RFS participates in an enterprise that he helped launch. Every young researcher whose unconventional idea receives a fair hearing benefits, in some measure, from the editorial philosophy that guided the journal’s founding.

There is something particularly fitting about this legacy. A journal is a collective undertaking whose success extends far beyond the tenure of its founding editor. Its editors change, its contributors come and go, and its intellectual concerns evolve. The founder’s greatest achievement is to create an institution strong enough to develop independently of its creator while remaining faithful to the principles that gave it purpose. Michael accomplished precisely that. The RFS became a major institution in financial economics because its founding principles allowed it to grow with the discipline.

Michael Brennan’s passing invites us to reflect on what it means to serve an academic community. His example reminds us that scholarship and service are not competing obligations. Deep research, careful editorial judgment, institutional entrepreneurship, and professional stewardship can reinforce one another. A scholar can advance knowledge through individual contributions while also creating the conditions in which others can do their best work. Indeed, the latter may sometimes be the more enduring contribution.

We remember Michael, therefore, not only for the quality and range of his research, but also for the vision, energy, and judgment that he brought to the founding of the Review of Financial Studies. He recognized an opportunity to strengthen financial economics, helped mobilize the people and resources needed to realize it, and established a journal whose influence would extend well beyond his own editorship. That achievement required intellectual conviction, practical determination, and a willingness to undertake a project whose ultimate success could not be guaranteed.

The Review of Financial Studies stands today as a living expression of that vision. Its continued contribution to the profession is a fitting tribute to the man who first guided it. Michael’s work will continue to be read, debated, and developed by future scholars; the institution he helped create will continue to provide a forum for discoveries he could not have anticipated. In that sense, his influence is not confined to the past. It remains woven into the ongoing life of financial economics.

Michael Brennan leaves behind a distinguished scholarly record and an institutional legacy of exceptional importance. We honor both with gratitude and admiration. Above all, we remember that the founding of the RFS was more than the launch of a journal: it was an expression of faith in the capacity of an academic community to renew itself through rigorous inquiry, intellectual openness, and shared purpose. For his enduring contributions, the profession owes Michael a profound debt. His example will remain an inspiration to scholars, editors, and institution builders for years to come.

George Constantinides (University of Chicago), Jonathan Ingersoll (Yale University), Chester Spatt (Carnegie Mellon University), and Mark Weinstein (University of Southern California)