Merton Miller (May 16th 1923 - June 3rd 2000) is a American economist . He is member elect of the “Nobel Prize” of economy.

Merton Miller and the Italian-American economist Franco Modigliani provided the foundations of the modern finance of company by publishing in the American Economic Review of June 1958 an article entitled The Cost off Capital, Corporation Finances off and the Theorie Investment . They affirm there in a theorem that, in a world deprived of tax and exonerated from cost of transaction, the value of the economic credit is independent in the way in which this economic credit is financed between debts and stockholders' equity.

In 1963 they adapt this theorem by the integration of the notion of the taxation of the companies. Within this framework there, they show that the value of the economic credit of the involved in debt company is equal to the value of the economic credit of a raised not involved in debt company current value of the saving in tax related to the tax deductibility of the interests of the debt.

In 1977, Miller only publishes a new article which integrates this time, not only the concept of taxation of the enteprises, but also the taxation of the private individuals investors in the reasoning. Accordingly, the economist shows that the taking into account from these two taxation makes it possible to dismount the same conclusions as those produced in 1958, namely that the manner of financing an economic credit between debts and stockholders' equity does not have an influence on the value of this economic credit.

See too

• Theorem of Modigliani-Miller