Umofomia · CC BY-SA 3.0

An Italian-American economist best known for the life-cycle hypothesis, the idea that people save and spend not to match their current income but to smooth consumption across their whole lives — borrowing as young adults, saving in their peak earning years, and drawing down savings in retirement. That framework became a standard tool in economics for understanding household behavior and national savings rates, and won Modigliani the 1985 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He taught for decades at MIT after posts at Illinois and Carnegie Mellon.