Economists (Baumol, Malkiel, and Quandt in the case of the Chicago Board Options Exchange; Friedman in the case of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange) helped make the Chicago financial derivatives markets possible by providing initial legitimacy. Black, Scholes, and Merton provided the capstone, decisively undermining the regulatory view that derivatives were morally dubious instruments of gambling. The modern derivatives markets might have developed even in the absence of this legitimatory role of economics futures markets and at least sporadic markets in options had emerged in previous centuries without much in the way of academic legitimation but there can be little doubt that economics eased their path.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 1135