{"id":20,"date":"2018-12-14T19:46:22","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T19:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.som.yale.edu\/andrewmetrick\/?page_id=20"},"modified":"2025-07-31T17:32:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T17:32:00","slug":"biography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/faculty.som.yale.edu\/andrewmetrick\/biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Biography"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I grew up in the New York City suburbs. I was an indifferent student, and I still owe apologies to my high-school<\/a> teachers.\u00a0 I spent a lot of my youth playing chess and traveling to tournaments, which took up most of the time I should have spent studying.\u00a0The good news is that it is possible to get a chess fix online these days, and the best place to do that is at chess.com<\/a>.\u00a0 If this existed in my childhood I would never have left the house. These days, I try to spend no more than two hours a week there.\u00a0The operative word here is \u201ctry\u201d.<\/p>\n

I came to Yale<\/a> as an undergraduate in 1985.\u00a0I had no clear idea what to do with my life until I met James Tobin<\/a>.\u00a0 He was a Professor of Economics<\/a> and Finance at Yale, and the Nobel Prize winner in Economics in 1981.\u00a0 I worked for Tobin for three years as a research assistant.\u00a0 Tobin was one of the giants of 20th<\/sup> century economics, but never lost his Midwest modesty.\u00a0 He treated everyone with dignity and respect \u2013 even research assistants who made mistakes on simple tasks. I decided I wanted to be like him when I grew up. This has turned out to be an impossible task, but the effort remains worthwhile. Professor Tobin died in 2002. You can read my tribute to him here.<\/a><\/p>\n

I got my Ph.D. in economics at Harvard<\/a> in 1994.\u00a0My thesis advisor was Eric Maskin<\/a>, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2007. I think I embarrassed my advisor by writing perhaps the silliest dissertation in the history of the Harvard economics department, including chapters about the Jeopardy! game show and about betting on the NCAA basketball tournament.\u00a0The specific papers may have seemed whimsical, but the main idea was serious: \u201chow do people make decisions?\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduation, I stayed at Harvard for five years as a junior faculty member.\u00a0I continued to be interested in my dissertation topic, but there are only so many game shows in the world that one can study.\u00a0 I decided that financial economics would be a great field for someone who loved data and was interested in decision-making.\u00a0I started writing finance papers in the late 1990s and moved to Wharton<\/a> in 1999.<\/p>\n

Wharton was a wonderful place to do research in finance. It is huge department<\/a>, and for any question you might have, there is someone there to answer it.\u00a0 When I arrived at Wharton, there was a need for someone to teach venture capital.\u00a0 I did not know much about it at the time, but I volunteered and took on the course.\u00a0 This turned out to be a great experience, and I taught various venture capital and private equity courses for the next ten years.\u00a0 In 2006 I published a textbook<\/a> on the topic. I still get many questions from students who would like to get into venture capital after they graduate.\u00a0The sad reality is that this is very hard to do. How hard?\u00a0 Check out this video from the Wharton Follies 2006<\/a>.\u00a0I play the bald guy.<\/p>\n

In January 2008 I moved to the Yale School of Management<\/a>, where I am a professor of finance<\/a>. So I came back where I started (sort of).\u00a0Just after I moved, the whole financial system started to collapse. The first big event was the fall of Bear Stearns in March of 2008.\u00a0 This event hit very close to home for me.\u00a0I worked at Bear Stearns for three summers during college, and I had a great learning experience with a job that allowed me rotate across almost every department. I did not go to Bear Stearns after college, but my father did join in 1989, and he worked there in some form right up until the end.<\/p>\n

Since 2008, I have focused on financial crises as my main area of research.\u00a0I have an enormous amount left to learn, and I am not alone.\u00a0 The recent financial crisis made clear large gaps in our understanding of the modern financial system and the role it plays in the economy.\u00a0I got a chance to practice what I preach while working for President Obama\u2019s Council of Economic Advisers from 2009-10.\u00a0 Like many economists in Washington that year, my time was spent mostly on attempts to stop the bleeding from the financial crisis and to make plans to prevent the next one.\u00a0\u00a0 I was on leave from Yale but not far from Yalies \u2013 click here<\/a> to see a picture of three students of James Tobin sitting together in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

My midlife financial crisis also led to a complete change in my teaching, with all my courses now relating in some way to financial crises. I teach a PhD course on \u201cFinancial Crises\u201d with my friend and research collaborator Gary Gorton<\/a>,\u00a0I have learned an enormous amount from Gary, and this learning continues every time we teach together. I also teach an elective course<\/a> for MBA students and undergraduates on \u201cThe Global Financial Crisis\u201d.\u00a0This course is co-taught with Timothy F. Geithner<\/a>, who had a front row seat to everything that happened and shares this unique perspective with our students.\u00a0The lectures for this course are also available for free on Coursera<\/a>.\u00a0You can view an introduction to the course here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My research, teaching, and service activities all come together in the Yale Program on Financial Stability <\/a>(YPFS), where I am the faculty director.\u00a0The YPFS produces cases and analyses<\/a>, holds academic conferences<\/a>, and brings together<\/a> scholars and policymakers to prevent (and prepare for) the next financial crisis.<\/p>\n

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