Richard Roll

{{distinguish|Rick Roll|Richard Rolle}}{{Infobox economist

| school_tradition = Chicago School

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| name = Richard Roll

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1939|10|31}}

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| nationality = American

| field = Financial economics

| influences = Merton Miller

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| repec_prefix = f | repec_id = pro507

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{{Short description|American economist (born 1939)}}

Richard Roll (born October 31, 1939) is an American economist and professor of finance at CalTech, best known for his work on portfolio theory and asset pricing, both theoretical and empirical.

He earned his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Auburn University in 1961, and his M.B.A. in 1963 at the University of Washington while working for Boeing in Seattle, Washington. In 1968, he received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago in economics, finance, and statistics. 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 Prize as the best American dissertation in economics in 1968.

Roll co-authored the first event study that sought to analyze how stock prices respond to an event in 1969,{{cite journal |last=Fama |first=Eugene |author2=Fisher, Lawrence |author3=Jensen, Michael C. |author4=Roll, Richard |year=1969 |title=The Adjustment of Stock Prices to New Information |journal=International Economic Review |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=1–21 |doi=10.2307/2525569 |jstor= 2525569}} using price data from the newly available CRSP database. Roll has co-authored major papers with Stephen Ross,{{cite journal |last=Chen |first=Nai-Fu |author2=Roll, Richard |author3=Ross, Stephen |year=1986 |title=Economic Forces and the Stock Market |journal=Journal of Business |volume=59 |issue=3 |pages=383–403 |doi=10.1086/296344 |jstor= 2352710}}{{cite journal |author2=Ross, Stephen |year=1980 |title=An Empirical Investigation of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory |journal=Journal of Finance |volume=35 |issue=5 |pages=1073–1103 |doi=10.2307/2327087 |jstor= 2327087 |author1=Roll, Richard }}{{cite journal |author2=Ross, Stephen |year=1994 |title=On the Cross-Sectional Relation between Expected Returns and Betas |journal=Journal of Finance |volume=49 |issue=1 |pages=101–121 |doi=10.2307/2329137 |jstor= 2329137|author1=Roll, Richard }} Eugene Fama,{{cite journal |last=Fama |first=Eugene |year=1971 |title=Parameter Estimates for Symmetric Stable Distributions |journal=Journal of the American Statistical Association |volume=66 |issue=334 |pages=331–338 |doi=10.2307/2283932 |jstor= 2283932}}{{cite journal |last=Fama |first=Eugene |year=1968 |title=Some Properties of Symmetric Stable Distributions |journal=Journal of the American Statistical Association |volume=63 |issue=323 |pages=817–836 |doi=10.2307/2283875 |jstor= 2283875}} Michael Jensen and Kenneth French.{{cite journal |last=French |first=Kenneth |year=1986 |title=Stock Return Variances: The Arrival of Information and the Reaction of Traders |journal=Journal of Financial Economics |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=5–26 |doi=10.1016/0304-405X(86)90004-8 }}

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, from which he retired as Japan Alumni Chair Professor of Finance in 2014. In 1987, Roll was elected president of the American Finance Association. Roll has published over 80 professional articles.{{cn|date=May 2025}}{{Cite web |last=Roll |first=Richard |date=July 9, 2021 |title=Richard Roll CV |url=https://www.hss.caltech.edu/documents/4224/Roll_Richard_2021.pdf |access-date=August 26, 2024}}

In addition to his academic work, Roll has also been active in the money management industry. From 1985-1987, he took a leave of absence from UCLA and worked at Goldman Sachs. In 1985 he also co-founded Roll and Ross Asset Management Corporation with Stephen Ross. Roll was co-chairman until 2005.