"The Variation of Certain Speculative Prices." Reprinted for private circulation from The Journal of Business of the University of Chicago, Vol. XXXVI, no. 4, October 1963, pp. 394-419.

Stapled, as issued. Very Good. First Edition. "How do prices vary on the organized markets called bourses, stock exchanges, or commodity exchanges? For centuries, such markets have thrived without the benefit of a systematic mathematical model. The first such model was put forward in 1900 by an outsider in French mathematics, Louis Bachelier. . . . Thanks to the computer, I was able to note the flaws in Bachelier's model in a rough report I wrote in 1962, and put forward a counter theory that could be stated with no formula, which truly fit my wild Keplerian dream. And it produced in 1963 my first paper on this work, 'The Variation of Certain Speculative Prices' [offered here], which was to be frequently cited in the economics literature. . . . Unfortunately, my careful tests that should have blown up Bachelier in 1963 failed. The economics profession decided that my work was too complicated and too unfamiliar. The departure it represented and further threatened was hard to develop and sell. It seemed far easier to continue with an endless stream of 'fixes' " (Mandelbrot, The Fractalist, pp. 218-19; with extended discussion through p. 226). In his "Annotations" to the reprinting of this paper in Fractals and Scaling in Finance (1997), Mandelbrot describes how this paper came to be published. "This paper's publication story is unique in my record, since it led a serious economics journal to follow a practice that is reputed to characterize The Reader's Digest. The story begins with . . . IBM Research Note NC-87, dated March 26, 1962. I followed that text when teaching in the Harvard Department of Economics in 1962-63 and it was discussed at the 1962 Annual Meeting of the Econometric Society. Later in 1963, after I had moved from the Harvard Economics Department to the Harvard Applied Physics program, Paul Cootner called from MIT. His book of reprints on The Random Character of Stock Market Prices was nearing completion, and he was sorry I was not a contributor. He was very familiar with my Report NC-87 and also knew that I was planning to expand this report into a short book. He wanted me to contribute to his book a short text based on NC-87, but did not want to include unpublished pieces, only actual reprints. Could my work be rushed into print somewhere, anywhere, so he could then reprint it? His publisher would accept page proofs. I called every economics journal editor in turn. Some asked me to spell my name, others inquired about my field of work, a few knew me, but bemoaned the length of their backlog and the slowness of their referees. Finally, I struck gold with Merton Miller, an editor of the Journal of Business of the University of Chicago. He asked for a few hours to check a few things, then called back with a deal: NC87 was already well-known in Chicago, therefore no refereeing was needed; if I could manage to mail a rough version of the paper within a week, he would stop an issue about to go to press, and add my paper to it. The journal would even provide editorial assistance, and there would be no bill for 'excessive' corrections in proof. This deal could not be turned down, and the paper and its reprint became widely known on the research side of the financial community. . . . Only after the paper had appeared did Merton Miller tell me that the editor Miller selected was E. F. Fama, who was no longer my student but on the University of Chicago faculty. Had this information been available in advance, I would have acknowledged Fama's help in my paper. I thanked him verbally, but this was not enough" (pp. 417-18). "Benoit Mandelbrot has been an incorrigibly original mind, and economists have been blessed by his insights. On the scroll of great non-economists who have advanced economics by quantum leaps, next to John von Neumann we read the name of Benoit Mandelbrot" (Paul Samuelson).…