Roland Fryer

Roland Fryer

Roland Gerhard Fryer, Jr. (born June 4, 1977 ) is an American economist and professor at Harvard University , where he holds the Robert M. Beren Professorship for Economics . Fryer's research focus is on social economics , the application of economic theory and, in particular, applied microeconomics . In 2008, Fryer was selected by the Economist as one of eight top young economists for his socio-economic research on the causes of the below-average economic performance of African Americans . Furthermore, Fryer was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation in 2011 for his work on the causes and consequences of ethnicity and economic inequality for the distribution of wealth in American society .

education

After Fryer received a BA in Economics with a grade magna cum laude from the University of Texas, Arlington in 1998, he moved to Pennsylvania State University . From this he received in 2002 for his dissertation "Mathematical Models of Discrimination and Inequality ", supervised by Tomas Sjöström , a Ph.D. awarded in economics.

Professional background

After completing his PhD at Pennsylvania State University, Fryer worked from 2003 to 2006 as a Junior Fellow for the Harvard Society of Fellows at Harvard University . At the same time he started working as a Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research . In 2006, Fryer then accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he was promoted to full professor in 2007 and was given the M. Beren Professorship in Economics in 2009. In addition, Fryer has been a Faculty Associate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science since 2006 and was Deputy Director of the Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research from 2006 to 2008 . In 2008, he founded the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University , a research center dedicated to closing the gap between the educational achievements of different school and student groups (e.g. differentiated according to gender, ethnic origin, socio-economic origin, etc.).

In 2015, Fryer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received the John Bates Clark Medal .

research

According to the economic publications database IDEAS , Fryer is one of the 5% of the most research-intensive economists (rank 1711) in the overall ranking. The most cited article, Fryers co-authored with Steven Levitt , is Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School (2004). In this article, Fryer and Levitt examine the causes of the differences between the educational achievement of African American and white students and are able to show that the differences between the two groups in kindergarten are insignificant, but that African American students fall significantly behind white students during the first two years of school. They also find indications that differences in school quality explain an important part of the performance differences, but also that alternative hypotheses are not empirically proven by the study.

Article (selection)

• Fryer, Roland G., Steven Levitt (2004): Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School , in: The Review of Economics and Statistics , Vol. 86, No. 2, pp. 447-464 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Emerging economists: International young bright things , in: The Economist, December 30, 2008 (English)
2. ^ Roland Fryer on the MacArthur Foundation website.
3. ↑ Background information on EdLabs on the Education Innovation Laboratory website (English)
4. ↑ Overall ranking of the economic database IDEAS (English)
5. ↑ Author profile of Roland Gerhard Fryer on IDEAS (English)
6. ↑ Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School on IDEAS (English)

source

Curriculum Vitae Roland Fryers on the Harvard University website (English)