Robert L. McDonald
· Gaylord Freeman Distinguished Chair in Banking; Professor of Finance; Chair, Finance DepartmentNorthwestern University · Management & Organizations
Active 1959–2025
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About
Robert L. McDonald is the Gaylord Freeman Distinguished Chair in Banking and a Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He has been a faculty member at Kellogg since 1984 and has served as the chair of the Finance Department and as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and a BA in Economics from the University of North Carolina. Professor McDonald's research interests encompass corporate finance, derivatives, taxation, and applications of option pricing theory to corporate investments. He has taught courses in derivatives, corporate finance, taxation, and data analytics. Throughout his career, he has received numerous research awards and has held editorial positions in prominent finance journals. He has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and was a faculty member at Boston University prior to joining Kellogg.
Research topics
- Business
- Finance
- Economics
- Financial system
Selected publications
2010-01-01 · 27 citations
book-chapterSenior authorThe federal government explicitly guarantees a portion of deposit obli-gations of commercial banks and thrifts through deposit insurance, and is thought to provide protection beyond this legal obligation for institu-tions considered “too big to fail. ” Although not explicitly guaranteed until
Panel Discussion on Derivatives and Dodd–Frank
The MIT Press eBooks · 2014-10-03 · 14 citations
book-chapterRatings and Asset Allocation: An Experimental Analysis
National Bureau of Economic Research · 2018-09-01 · 5 citations
reportOpen access1st authorCorrespondingInvestment ratings (e.g., by Morningstar) provide a simple ordinal scale (e.g., 1 to 5) for comparing investments. Typically, ratings are assigned within categories -groups of assets sharing common characteristics -but using the same ordinal scale for all groups. Comparing such categorized ratings across categories is potentially misleading. We study the effect of categorized ratings in an asset allocation experiment in which subjects make repeated allocation decisions under complete information…
Photo Vignette - Restraining the Welfare State Solidarity
Open Collections · 2019-02-27 · 1 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingPhoto Vignette - Restraining the Welfare State Solidarity
derivmkts: Functions and R Code to Accompany Derivatives Markets
2016-05-08 · 1 citations
datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 47 shared
Deborah Lucas
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 15 shared
Alex Kane
- 8 shared
Malcolm D. Gynther
Auburn University
- 8 shared
Alan J. Marcus
- 7 shared
Donald S. Siegel
- 7 shared
Zvi Bodie
- 6 shared
Robert A. Korajczyk
- 6 shared
Charles M. Kahn
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Awards & honors
- Graham and Dodd Scroll from the Financial Analyst's Federati…
- Iddo Sarnat Prize from the Journal of Banking and Finance
- Smith Breeden Prize from the Journal of Finance
- Review of Financial Studies Prize from the Review of Financi…
- Elected Director of the American Finance Association (2010-2…
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