Franco Modigliani ((US: /ˌmoʊdiːlˈjɑːni/; Italian: [modiʎˈʎaːni]; 18 June 1918 – 25 September 2003)[1] was an Italian-American economist and the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

Modigliani was born on 18 June 1918 in Rome to the Jewish family of a pediatrician father and a voluntary social worker mother.

[3] In his second year at Sapienza, his submission to a nationwide contest in economics sponsored by the official student organization of the state, won first prize and Modigliani received an award from the hand of Benito Mussolini.

His Ph.D. dissertation, an elaboration and extension of John Hicks' IS–LM model, was written under the supervision of Jacob Marschak and Abba Lerner, in 1944,[note 1] and is considered "ground breaking.

[10] The hypothesis that consumers aim for a stable level of consumption throughout their lifetime (for example by saving during their working years and then spending during their retirement).

[15][16] In the early 1960s, his response,[17] co-authored with Albert Ando, to the 1963 paper[18] of Milton Friedman and David I. Meiselman, initiated the so-called "monetary/fiscal policy debate" among economists, which went on for more than sixty years.

Late in his life, Modigliani became a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security organization, formerly "Economists Allied for Arms Reduction"[24] and was considered an "influential adviser": in the late 1960s, on a contract with the Federal Reserve, he designed the "MIT-Pennsylvania-Social Science Research Council" model, a tool that "guided monetary policy in Washington for many decades.

[31] Serena Modigliani-Calabi, active to the end in progressive politics, most notably with the League of Women Voters, and an outspoken believer in participatory democracy,[32] died in 2008.