Dr William T. Ziemba is the Alumni Professor (Emeritus) of Financial Modeling and Stochastic Optimization in the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia where he taught from 1968-2006. His PhD is from the University of California, Berkeley. He currently teaches part time and makes short research visits at various universities. Recently he is the Distinguished Visiting Research Associate, Systemic Risk Centre, London School of Economics.
He has been a visiting professor at Cambridge, Oxford, London School of Economics, University of Reading and Warwick in the UK, at Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, MIT, University of Washington and Chicago in the US, Universities of Bergamo, Venice and Luiss in Italy, the Universities of Zurich, Cyprus, Tsukuba (Japan), Sabanci (Turkey), EDHEC (France), KAIST (Korea) and the National University and the National Technological University of Singapore.
He has been a consultant to a number of leading financial institutions including the Frank Russell Company, Morgan Stanley, Buchanan Partners, RAB Hedge Funds, Gordon Capital, Matcap, Ketchum Trading and, in the gambling area, to the BC Lotto Corporation, SCA Insurance, Singapore Pools, Canadian Sports Pool, Keeneland Racetrack and some racetrack syndicates in Hong Kong, Manila and Australia. His research is in asset-liability management, portfolio theory and practice, security market imperfections, Japanese and Asian financial markets, hedge fund strategies, risk management, sports and lottery investments and applied stochastic programming. His co-written practitioner paper on the Russell-Yasuda model won second prize in the 1993 Edelman Practice of Management Science Competition. He has been a futures and equity trader and hedge fund and investment manager since 1983. In 2015, he won the futures part of the Battle of the Quants Trading Contest and beat the equity winner as well. He uses behavioral biases, mean reversion, mispriced options, institutional practices, presidential election and FED meeting effects plus calendar anomalies.
He has published widely in journals such as Operations Research, Management Science,, Mathematics of OR, Mathematical Programming, American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Finance, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, JFQA, Quantitative Finance, Journal of Portfolio Management and Journal of Banking and Finance and in many books and special journal issues.
Recent books include Applications of Stochastic Programming with S.W. Wallace, SIAM-MPS, 2005, Stochastic Optimization Models in Finance, 2nd edition with R.G. Vickson, World Scientific, 2006 and Handbook of Asset and Liability Modeling, Volume 1: Theory and Methodology (2006) and Volume 2: Applications and Case Studies (2007) with S. A. Zenios, North Holland, Scenarios for Risk Management and Global Investment Strategies with Rachel Ziemba, Wiley, 2007, Handbook of Investments: Sports and Lottery Betting Markets, with Donald Hausch, North Holland, 2008, Optimizing the Aging, Retirement and Pensions Dilemma with Marida Bertocchi and Sandra Schwartz, 2010 (2nd edition 2015), and The Kelly Capital Growth Investment Criterion, 2010, with legendary hedge fund trader Edward Thorp and Leonard MacLean, Calendar Anomalies and Arbitrage, The 2-volume Handbook of the Fundamentals of Financial Decision Making (with Leonard MacLean) and Stochastic Programming (with Horand Gassman), published by World Scientific in 2012 and 2013. The Handbook of Futures (with T. Mallaris) appeared in 2015. For 2016 there is the monograph: Great Investment Ideas for World Scientific. For 2017 has seen the publication of Stock Market Crashes: Big and Small and What to Do About Them and a memoirs financial history book Adventures of a modern renaissance academic in gambling and investing.
He is the series editor for North Holland’s Handbooks in Finance, World Scientific Handbooks in Financial Economics and Books in Finance, and previously was the CORS editor of INFOR and the department of finance editor of Management Science, 1982-1992. He has continued his columns in Wilmott and his 2013 book with Rachel Ziemba have the 2007-2013 columns updated with new material published by World Scientific. Ziemba, along with Hausch, wrote the famous Beat the Racetrack book (1984 (which was revised into Dr Z’s Beat the Racetrack (1987), which presented their place and show betting system and the Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets (1994, 2008) – the so-called bible of racetrack syndicates. Their 1986 book Betting at the Racetrack extends this efficient/inefficient market approach to simple exotic bets. Ziemba is revising BATR into Exotic Betting at the Racetrack (World Scientific) which adds Pick3,4,5,6, etc.
He has been a visiting professor at Cambridge, Oxford, London School of Economics, University of Reading and Warwick in the UK, at Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, MIT, University of Washington and Chicago in the US, Universities of Bergamo, Venice and Luiss in Italy, the Universities of Zurich, Cyprus, Tsukuba (Japan), Sabanci (Turkey), EDHEC (France), KAIST (Korea) and the National University and the National Technological University of Singapore.
He has been a consultant to a number of leading financial institutions including the Frank Russell Company, Morgan Stanley, Buchanan Partners, RAB Hedge Funds, Gordon Capital, Matcap, Ketchum Trading and, in the gambling area, to the BC Lotto Corporation, SCA Insurance, Singapore Pools, Canadian Sports Pool, Keeneland Racetrack and some racetrack syndicates in Hong Kong, Manila and Australia. His research is in asset-liability management, portfolio theory and practice, security market imperfections, Japanese and Asian financial markets, hedge fund strategies, risk management, sports and lottery investments and applied stochastic programming. His co-written practitioner paper on the Russell-Yasuda model won second prize in the 1993 Edelman Practice of Management Science Competition. He has been a futures and equity trader and hedge fund and investment manager since 1983. In 2015, he won the futures part of the Battle of the Quants Trading Contest and beat the equity winner as well. He uses behavioral biases, mean reversion, mispriced options, institutional practices, presidential election and FED meeting effects plus calendar anomalies.
He has published widely in journals such as Operations Research, Management Science,, Mathematics of OR, Mathematical Programming, American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Finance, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, JFQA, Quantitative Finance, Journal of Portfolio Management and Journal of Banking and Finance and in many books and special journal issues.
Recent books include Applications of Stochastic Programming with S.W. Wallace, SIAM-MPS, 2005, Stochastic Optimization Models in Finance, 2nd edition with R.G. Vickson, World Scientific, 2006 and Handbook of Asset and Liability Modeling, Volume 1: Theory and Methodology (2006) and Volume 2: Applications and Case Studies (2007) with S. A. Zenios, North Holland, Scenarios for Risk Management and Global Investment Strategies with Rachel Ziemba, Wiley, 2007, Handbook of Investments: Sports and Lottery Betting Markets, with Donald Hausch, North Holland, 2008, Optimizing the Aging, Retirement and Pensions Dilemma with Marida Bertocchi and Sandra Schwartz, 2010 (2nd edition 2015), and The Kelly Capital Growth Investment Criterion, 2010, with legendary hedge fund trader Edward Thorp and Leonard MacLean, Calendar Anomalies and Arbitrage, The 2-volume Handbook of the Fundamentals of Financial Decision Making (with Leonard MacLean) and Stochastic Programming (with Horand Gassman), published by World Scientific in 2012 and 2013. The Handbook of Futures (with T. Mallaris) appeared in 2015. For 2016 there is the monograph: Great Investment Ideas for World Scientific. For 2017 has seen the publication of Stock Market Crashes: Big and Small and What to Do About Them and a memoirs financial history book Adventures of a modern renaissance academic in gambling and investing.
He is the series editor for North Holland’s Handbooks in Finance, World Scientific Handbooks in Financial Economics and Books in Finance, and previously was the CORS editor of INFOR and the department of finance editor of Management Science, 1982-1992. He has continued his columns in Wilmott and his 2013 book with Rachel Ziemba have the 2007-2013 columns updated with new material published by World Scientific. Ziemba, along with Hausch, wrote the famous Beat the Racetrack book (1984 (which was revised into Dr Z’s Beat the Racetrack (1987), which presented their place and show betting system and the Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets (1994, 2008) – the so-called bible of racetrack syndicates. Their 1986 book Betting at the Racetrack extends this efficient/inefficient market approach to simple exotic bets. Ziemba is revising BATR into Exotic Betting at the Racetrack (World Scientific) which adds Pick3,4,5,6, etc.