A conversation with Robert C. Merton, PhD, on models, risk, and the right measurement of a good retirement. Professor Merton has spent 6 decades moving between two worlds that rarely meet. During his time in MIT and Harvard, he built much of the mathematical scaffolding of modern finance — the continuous-time models, and the options-pricing theory that earned him the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. On trading floors and in boardrooms, he has spent equally long in bringing those ideas into the real world.  Now a resident scientist at Dimensional Fund Advisors, the firm with which he has been associated for much of his career, Merton sat down in Hong Kong with Samuel Rhee — the Co-Founder, Chairman & Group CIO of Endowus — for an exclusive panel in front of more than 250 Endowus clients. The conversation ranged across broad topics including the importance of financial models...