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BusinessHorizons / November-December 1989 On the Computerization of Finance Dudley G. Luckett 42 Dudley G. Luckettis Distinguished Profes- Todays technology not only affects the sor of Sciences and Humanities and a pro- fessor of economics at Iowa State Univer- worlds financial transactions; it may affect sity, Ames. A longer version of this article was delivered as a faculty lecture at the economic theory as well. National University of Singapore in 1988. A funny thing happened on our a method of verification that, if only a way to the twenty-first cen- pale imitation of physics, is neverthe- tury. Economists became re- less well beyond the capacity of other spectable. Some 200 years ago, Edmund behavioral disciplines. In short, econo- Burke (in his Reflections on the Revolu- mists are called upon to proffer advice tion in France, 1790) expressed what precisely because they have advice to was probably the prevailing sentiment proffer. And if sometimes the advice is of his time when he wrote, The age of contradictory and none too accurate, it chivalry has gone. That of sophisters, is nevertheless vastly superior to the economists, and calculators has suc