Andrew Wen-Chuan Lo (; born 1960) is a Hong Kong-born Taiwanese-American economist and academic who is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor of Finance at the
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management (branded as MIT Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree progra ...
. Lo is the author of many academic articles in
finance
Finance refers to monetary resources and to the study and Academic discipline, discipline of money, currency, assets and Liability (financial accounting), liabilities. As a subject of study, is a field of Business administration, Business Admin ...
and
financial economics
Financial economics is the branch of economics characterized by a "concentration on monetary activities", in which "money of one type or another is likely to appear on ''both sides'' of a trade".William F. Sharpe"Financial Economics", in
Its co ...
. He founded
AlphaSimplex Group in 1999 and served as chairman and chief investment strategist until 2018 when he transitioned to his current role as chairman emeritus and senior advisor.
Life and career
Lo was born in 1960 in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
and was raised in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
. He and his family lived in Taiwan before immigrating to the United States when Lo was five years old. Raised by a single mother, Lo graduated from the
Bronx High School of Science
The Bronx High School of Science is a State school, public Specialized high schools in New York City, specialized high school in the Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science ...
in 1977. He then studied
economics
Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...
at
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
, graduating in 1980 with a
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...
. He then did doctoral study in economics at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
, receiving a
Master of Arts
A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...
and a
Ph.D. in 1984.
Lo is a professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the director of MIT's Laboratory for Financial Engineering, a principal investigator at
MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, an affiliated faculty of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, an external faculty member of the
Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, inc ...
, and a research associate of the
National Bureau of Economic Research
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic co ...
. He previously taught at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
's
Wharton School
The Wharton School ( ) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton ...
from 1984 to 1988 as an assistant and associate professor of finance before joining the Sloan School of Management faculty in 1988.
He is the founder of AlphaSimplex Group,
[Profile: Andrew W. Lo](_blank)
– AlphaSimplex Group a
quantitative investment management company based in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...
, and served as its chairman and chief investment strategist until 2018 when he transitioned to his current role as chairman emeritus and senior advisor. AlphaSimplex specializes in quantitative
global macro and
global tactical asset allocation strategies,
beta
Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...
-replication products, and
absolute-return risk analytics.
Lo presented a paper in 2004 at a
National Bureau of Economic Research
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic co ...
conference, warning of "the rising systematic risk to financial markets and particularly focused on the potential liquidity, leverage and counterparty risk from hedge funds." He testified in 2008 before the
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the main investigative United States congressional committee, committee of the United States House of Representatives. The committee's broad jurisdiction and legislative authority make it one o ...
and the
Committee on Financial Services of the
U.S. House of Representatives on
hedge funds
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that holds liquid assets and that makes use of complex trading and risk management techniques to aim to improve investment performance and insulate returns from market risk. Among these portfolio techniq ...
,
systemic risk
In finance, systemic risk is the risk of collapse of an entire financial system or entire market, as opposed to the risk associated with any one individual entity, group or component of a system, that can be contained therein without harming the ...
, and the
2008 financial crisis
The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...
. With
Lars Peter Hansen, Lo co-directed the Macro Financial Modeling project at the
Becker Friedman Institute, a network of
macroeconomists working to develop improved models of the linkages between the financial and real sectors of the economy in the wake of the
2008 financial crisis
The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...
.
Lo was a founding co-editor of the ''
Annual Review of Financial Economics
Annual may refer to:
* Annual publication, periodical publications appearing regularly once per year
** Yearbook
** Literary annual
* Annual plant
* Annual report
* Annual giving
* Annual, Morocco, a settlement in northeastern Morocco
* Annuals ( ...
'', serving from 2009 to 2021.
He serves on the Board of Directors of
Annual Reviews. Lo is an advisor to the ''
Journal of Investment Management'' and ''
The Journal of Portfolio Management''. He is also a director of Roivant Sciences.
Awards
His awards include Batterymarch,
Guggenheim, and Sloan fellowships; the Paul A. Samuelson Award; the Eugene Fama Prize; the
IAFE-SunGard Financial Engineer of the Year award; the Global Association of Risk Professionals' Risk Manager of the Year award; the Harry M. Markowitz Award; the Managed Futures Pinnacle Achievement Award; one of ''
Time
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' magazine's "100 most influential people in the world"; and awards for teaching excellence from both Wharton and MIT. His most recent book, ''Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought'', has also received a number of awards.
Lo is a fellow of Academia Sinica, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the Society of Financial Econometrics.
Publications
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References
External links
*
Becker Friedman Institute - Macro Financial Modeling*
Profileon
BFI
* on
MIT Sloan
** on Expertise Guide
**
Paperson
Social Science Research Network
The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is an open access research platform that functions as a repository for sharing early-stage research and the rapid dissemination of scholarly research in the social sciences, humanities, life sciences, ...
(SSRN)
Profileo
Alpha Simplex*
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Alt URL
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lo, Andrew
Financial economists
Living people
1960 births
Yale University alumni
Harvard University alumni
MIT Sloan School of Management faculty
Hong Kong emigrants to the United States
American people of Chinese descent
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Annual Reviews (publisher) editors
Members of Academia Sinica