Alumni and Friends Directory

Kerry Back

Kerry Back

Title: Professor of Economics and Finance

Company: Jones Graduate School of Business

Location: Houston, TX

Educational Background

Ph.D., Economics, University of Kentucky, 1983
B.A., Economics, Western Kentucky University, 1978


Huntsman School Interactions:

Dean's Convocation Speaker -  April 7, 2014

Biography

Kerry Back is the J. Howard Creekmore Professor of Finance at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. He was previously a faculty member at Northwestern University, Indiana University, Washing­ton University in St. Louis, and Texas A&M University. At Washington University in St. Louis, he served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the Olin School of Business and was named a University Distinguished Faculty Member.

Currently, he teaches derivatives and risk management to MBA students and asset pricing theory to PhD students at the Jones School. His research interests are in the areas of investments and market design, and he has served as an editor of the Review of Financial Studies, a co-editor of Finance & Stochastics, and an associate editor of the Journal of Finance and other journals. He received faculty research awards at Texas A&M and at Rice University, and he was recently inducted into the University of Kentucky Gatton School of Business Alumni Hall of Fame.

He is the author of two, widely used textbooks and has published numerous articles in the top finance and economic journals, such as Econometrica, the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Financial Studies. His sole authored paper, “Asymmetric Information and Options,” won the 1993 best paper award in the Review of Financial Studies.

Dr. Back is listed as one of the most prolific authors in the top finance journals according to Cooley and Heck (2009). He has served as Editor at the Review of Financial Studies and Finance and Stochastics, and has also served in editorial positions at the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Jour­nal of Economic Dynamics and Control, and Mathematical Finance.

He was a visiting professor at Wharton and was named University Distinguished Faculty Member at Washington University in St. Louis. His doctoral students have been placed at MIT and Wharton.

Videos:

Dean's Convocation: Kerry Back