Matters are more complex in respect to the small-firm effect. As was noted in chapter 3, a former University of Chicago MBA student, Rex Sinquefield, led the index-fund effort at the American National Bank in Chicago. In 1976 or 1977, Sinquefield learned of Banz's as yet unpublished Ph.D. work identifying the small-firm effect. He phoned Banz at the University of Chicago and asked "Could you come downtown for lunch?" The "preliminary numbers" that Banz showed Sinquefield and his colleagues persuaded them to extend American National's index funds to encompass stocks outside the S&P 500 (Sinquefield interview), and Banz's work informed the original central strategy of Dimensional Fund Advisors, an investment firm set up in Santa Monica in 1981 by Sinquefield and David Booth (also a Chicago MBA).

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 437