Robin Greenwood (born 1977) is an American economist, and both the George Gund Professor of Finance and Banking and the Anne and James F. Rothenberg Faculty Fellow at

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

. He was formerly head of the school's finance unit, and chair of the Behavioral Finance and Financial Stability project. He also served on the Financial Advisory Roundtable of the

Federal Reserve Bank of New York The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States. It is responsible for the Second District of the Federal Reserve System, which encompasses the State of New York, the 12 northern counties of New ...

. Greenwood is known for his work on behavioral and institutional finance, with a particular focus on "macro-level" market inefficiencies. Other research has included the predictability of stock market bubbles, and behavioral aspects of bond markets.

Academia

Greenwood received a B.S. in Economics and Mathematics at MIT in 1998, before receiving his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

from

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in Economics in 2003. During his Ph.D., Greenwood spent time as a post-doctoral Fellow at

, before becoming an Assistant Professor of Business Administration there in 2003. He has remained a member of the school's faculty since, though was a Visiting Fellow at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

in 2007, and a Schoen Scholar at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 2008. Greenwood became a full professor in 2012. He also spent time, between 2018 and 2021, as head of the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School, and was formerly chair of the Business Economics PhD program. Greenwood was a member of the Financial Advisory Roundtable of the

alongside

Viral Acharya Viral V. Acharya (born 1 March 1974) is an India, Indian economist who was appointed as Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). He also served as a member of the advisory council of the RBI Academy and was a member of the Academic Counci ...

Thomas Philippon Thomas Philippon (born May 1974) is a French economist and professor of finance at the New York University Stern School of Business. Career Philippon earned a Master of Arts, MA in Physics in 1997 from École Polytechnique, a Master in Economics i ...

John H. Cochrane John Howland Cochrane ( ; born 26 November 1957) is an American economist specializing in financial economics and macroeconomics. Formerly a professor of economics and finance at the University of Chicago, Cochrane serves full-time as the Rose-Ma ...

Jeremy C. Stein Jeremy Chaim Stein (born October 17, 1960) is an American macroeconomist and the Moise Y. Safra Professor of Economics at Harvard University; he also chaired Harvard's economics department. He served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Go ...

and others, and served as an editor of '' The Review of Financial Studies''.

Research

Expectations and bubbles

Greenwood's research focuses primarily on behavioral and institutional finance, with a specific view on macro-level market inefficiencies; notably

monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money supply, often a ...

, stock price bubbles, supply and demand in the bond markets, and predictable financial crises. His work on "Bubbles for Fama", which defined a crash as a 40 percent drop within a two-year period and set parameters for the probability of crashes, has been frequently referenced in suggesting that the valuations of Tesla and

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

are bubbles. Other work includes the role of institutional finance and the 'financialisation' of the economy, as well as private sector impacts on the economy, where a series of articles increased interest in investor expectations. For his work on an extrapolative capital asset pricing model, the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance awarded him the Jack Treynor Prize in 2014.

Behavioral finance & financial stability

Greenwood also spent time as the faculty director of the Behavioral Finance and Financial Stability project at Harvard Business School. The project, launched in July 2016, focused on analysing and exploring stability within financial systems. Within it, Greenwood led research on liquidity management within banks, and the nature of modern

bank run A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may cease to function in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking system (where banks no ...

s. His work also linked growth within the financial sector to being a prelude to crisis; the perspective noted 'that financial instability often follows periods when financial institutions, like investors and policy makers, have underestimated risks'. Greenwood's later work in 'Predictable Financial Crises' concluded 'the combination of rapid credit growth and asset-price gains during the prior three years is associated with a 40 percent probability of entering a financial crisis within the next three years'.

Retail investors

Greenwood's research has also focused on individual investors, as well as the rise of 'meme stocks' and impact of retail investors in buoying the American market in 2020–21 and research on the impact of COVID-19 on the economy. His research noted that market speculation can flare with the combination of stimulus funds and retail investors. Earlier work, alongside

Nicholas Barberis Nicholas C. Barberis (born September 1971) is the Stephen & Camille Schramm Professor of Finance at the Yale School of Management. Professor Barberis' research focuses on behavioral finance and in particular, on applications of cognitive psycholo ...

and

Andrei Shleifer Andrei Shleifer ( ; born February 20, 1961) is a Russian-American economist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1991. Shleifer was awarded the biennial John Bates Clark Medal in 1999 for his seminal works in ...

linked bullishness to frequent extrapolation of results from recent returns, as well as observing the difficulty for individual investors in finding market-beating strategies.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenwood, Robin 1977 births Living people Harvard Business School faculty American economists Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni