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ChristianKl comments on Mathematicians and the Prevention of Recessions - Less Wrong
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I'm not sure whether it's a question of math. In a field like bioinformatics most of the important software is open source. In fiance it isn't.
If you want transparent fiancial analysis I would suggest to push for a big open source financial simulation. You might even want to start a new license to ensure that every one who contributes code also publishes his code.
If anyone is really good at it, why would they give it to you for free when they can give it to Goldman Sachs for six figures a year?
You have the same problem with getting mathematician into finance the way JonahSinick proposes. Someone who's completely motivated by money probably won't.
On the other hand being the head of a good open source financial simulation is probably a good way to get tenure as an economics professor.
Once you have a computer model that's useful, academic publications are going to use it and cite it.
There's also open source software that gets developed by companies that make good money. You could sell consulting to fit the software to particular business needs. There are a lot of companies besides Hedge funds and big banks that would profit from having access to good financial analysis tools.
If you customize your tool to help Walmart with their planning needs Walmart doesn't have a particular problem with the tool being open source and other companies also profiting from the tool.
I'm in general agreement with most of that, but I suspect that the practice of copylefting will ruin the "customize for Walmart" plan - they won't object to using an open-source tool, but they will object to the Walmart version being open-source. Also, anecdotally, academia places too low a value on toolmakers, instead preferring the analysts, which makes it a suboptimal way to get ahead - after all, what's your journal publication history if you spend all your time working on a computer program?