Efficient-markets champion Bernstein dead

Peter L. Bernstein, an economic consultant who sought to bring ideas of modern investment management from academia to the practitioner, died Friday in New York. He was president of an eponymous economic consulting firm to institutional investors and corporations that he founded in 1973 in that city. Mr. Bernstein was the author of "Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street," an updated volume, "Capital Ideas Evolving," and "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk," among other books and articles about investment management, the markets and risk. He "definitely was a believer in efficient markets and all the academic theory based on efficient markets, including the capital-asset-pricing model and the options-pricing model," said Bruce I. Jacobs, principal of Jacobs Levy Equity Management "He was a giant in the investing world," Theodore R. Aronson, principal at Aronson + Johnson + Ortiz, wrote in an e-mail. "To the very end, he was contributing mightily to our thinking about and appreciation of economics. He will be sorely missed and can never be replaced," Mr. Aronson said. Mr. Bernstein had served as a trustee of the College Retirement Equity Fund of TIAA-CREF. He was a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in economics, magna cum laude.