Stephen A. Ross was named the inaugural recipient of the CME/MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications for his creation and development of arbitrage pricing theory, according to a joint news release from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. Mr. Ross is Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The focus of much of his work has been on understanding how markets price assets," according to the release. The CME funds the $20,000 prize, said Allan Schoenberg, CME spokesman. Mr. Ross will receive the award Sept. 21 at the CME, in conjunction with a seminar featuring Nobel laureates Myron Scholes and Robert Merton speaking on the uses of mathematics in economics and the study of markets, the release said. Mr. Scholes is a member of the CME-MSRI prize selection committee and a trustee of MSRI, Berkeley, Calif. The research institute is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from other government agencies, private foundations, and academic and corporations, according to its website.