Richard Roll is an American economist, best known for his work on portfolio theory and asset pricing, both theoretical and empirical.

He earned his Bachelor's degree

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 in Aeronautical Engineering from Auburn University

Auburn University

Auburn University is a public university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 25,000 students and 1,200 faculty members, it is one of the largest universities in the state. Auburn was chartered on February 7, 1856, as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts...

 in 1961, and his M.B.A. in 1963 while working for Boeing

Boeing

The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...

 in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

. In 1968, he received his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 in economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, finance

Finance

"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...

, and statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

. His Ph.D. thesis, "The Behavior of Interest Rates: An Application of the Efficient Market Model to U.S. Treasury Bills," won the Irving Fisher

Irving Fisher

Irving Fisher was an American economist, inventor, and health campaigner, and one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation often regarded as belonging instead to the Post-Keynesian school.Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and...

 Prize as the best American dissertation in economics in 1968.

Roll co-authored the first event study

Event study

An Event study is a statistical method to assess the impact of an event on the value of a firm. For example, the announcement of a merger between two business entities can be analyzed to see whether investors believe the merger will create or destroy value...

 that sought to analyze how stock prices respond to an event in 1969, using price data from the newly available CRSP

Center for Research in Securities Prices

The Center for Research in Security Prices is a provider of historical stock market data. The Center is a part of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. CRSP maintains some of the largest and most comprehensive proprietary historical databases in stock market research...

 database. Roll has co-authored major papers with Stephen Ross

Stephen Ross (economist)

Stephen Alan "Steve" Ross is the inaugural Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is known for initiating several important theories and models in financial economics...

, Eugene Fama

Eugene Fama

Eugene Francis "Gene" Fama is an American economist, known for his work on portfolio theory and asset pricing, both theoretical and empirical. He is currently Robert R...

, Michael Jensen

Michael Jensen

Michael Cole "Mike" Jensen is an American economist working in the area of financial economics. He is currently the managing director in charge of organizational strategy at Monitor Group, a strategy consulting firm, and the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at...

 and Kenneth French

Kenneth French

Kenneth Ronald "Ken" French is the Carl E. and Catherine M. Heidt Professor of Finance at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. He has previously been a faculty member at MIT, the Yale School of Management, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business...

.

Roll took an Assistant Professor position at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1968, a professorship at the European Institute for Advance Studies in Management in 1973, and Centre d'Enseignement Superiéure des Affaires in 1975. In 1976, Roll joined the faculty at UCLA, where he remains to this day as Japan Alumni Chair Professor of Finance. In 1987, Roll was elected President of the American Finance Association

American Finance Association

The American Finance Association is an academic organization whose focus is the study and promotion of knowledge of financial economics. It was formed in 1939...

. He has published over 80 professional articles.

External links

• UCLA Page