Rajnish Mehra (Hindi: रजनीश मेहरा) (born January 15, 1950) is an

Indian American Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to ...

financial economist. He currently holds the E.N. Basha Arizona Heritage Endowed Chair at the

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in t ...

and is a Professor of Economics Emeritus at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the ...

Education

Mehra received his doctorate in Industrial Administration from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

(1978), a M.S. in Computer Science from

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universit ...

(1974), a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कानपुर) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was ...

(1972). He spent a year studying Mathematics at St. Stephen's College, Delhi University (1966–67).

Career

In 1976, he was appointed assistant professor at the School of Business, Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. He subsequently moved to the

Columbia Business School Columbia Business School (CBS) is the business school of Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. Established in 1916, Columbia Business School is one of six Ivy League business schools and is one of the oldest busin ...

in 1977, and in 1985 to the

, where he taught until 2010. He was department Chair from 2001-04. From 2012-2016 he held the Deutsche Bank Chair at the

University of Luxembourg The University of Luxembourg (French: ''Université du Luxembourg''; German: ''Universität Luxemburg''; Luxembourgish: ''Universitéit Lëtzebuerg'') is a public research university in Luxembourg. History The University of Luxembourg was found ...

. His visiting appointments include

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or 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 programs, a ...

(1987–89 and 2004-5), The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (1995-2006) and non-resident senior fellow at the

National Council of Applied Economic Research National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) is India’s oldest and largest independent, non-profit, economic policy research think tank. Established in New Delhi in 1956, it acquired considerable national and international standing wi ...

, New Delhi (2016–present). He has been a consultant to the Fixed Income Group at

Salomon Smith Barney Salomon Brothers, Inc., was an American multinational bulge bracket investment bank headquartered in New York. It was one of the five largest investment banking enterprises in the United States and the most profitable firm on Wall Street durin ...

and an advisor to Vega Asset Management.

Main Research Contributions

Recursive Equilibrium Theory

He is probably best known for his contributions to Recursive Competitive theory, an equilibrium concept widely used in modern dynamic macroeconomics, which he developed jointly with

Edward C. Prescott Edward Christian Prescott (December 26, 1940 – November 6, 2022) was an American economist. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2004, sharing the award with Finn E. Kydland, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: ...

Determinants of the Equity Premium

Another strand of his research focuses on understanding the determinants of the ‘equity premium’, the return earned by a diversified portfolio of stocks (such as the S&P 500) in excess of that earned by a risk free security such as a Treasury Bill. In 1979 he and

observed that the real equity premium over the past 90 years in the US was 6.18%, an order of magnitude larger than that could be rationalized by neo-classical economic theory. They termed this the ‘

Equity premium puzzle The equity premium puzzle refers to the inability of an important class of economic models to explain the average equity risk premium (ERP) provided by a diversified portfolio of U.S. equities over that of U.S. Treasury Bills, which has been obse ...

’. Attempts to resolve the puzzle have become a major research impetus in both finance and macroeconomics over the past thirty years.

References

External links

Rajnish Mehra's webpage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mehra, Rajnish 1950 births Indian emigrants to the United States Columbia University faculty MIT Sloan School of Management faculty Arizona State University faculty University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Rice University alumni Carnegie Mellon University alumni Living people American people of Indian descent American businesspeople