Finance and the Public Interest

Deborah Lucas is the Donald C. Clark HSBC Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She is also a member of several corporate and non-profit boards, an NBER research associate, and a co-editor of the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. Past policy-related experience includes appointments as Chief Economist at the Congressional Budget Office (2000 - 2001), senior staff economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers in Washington D.C. (1992 - 1993), and member of the Social Security Technical Advisory Panel (1999 - 2000; 2006 - 2007).

Her current research interests coincide with many of the topics that will be discussed in this blog: federal financial institutions (e.g., Fannie & Freddie Mac, student loans, PBGC, federal credit and insurance programs), pension policy, how to improve government budgeting and accounting, and health care policy.

Professor Lucas joined the Kellogg faculty in 1985. She holds a BA, MA, and PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. At Kellogg she teaches classes in fixed income securities, corporate finance, and asset pricing. Her research has been published in many leading academic journals and has received a number of top paper awards.

Robert McDonald is the Erwin P. Nemmers Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and has also served as department chair. Before joining Kellogg, he was a faculty member at Boston University and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He has taught courses in derivatives, corporate finance, and taxation.

Professor McDonald's research interests include corporate finance, taxation, derivatives, and applications of option pricing theory to corporate investments. Several of his papers have won research awards, including the Graham and Dodd Scroll from the Financial Analyst's Federation, the Iddo Sarnat Prize from the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Smith Breeden Prize from the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Financial Studies Prize from the Review of Financial Studies.

Professor McDonald is former Co-Editor of the Review of Financial Studies, and has served on a number of editorial boards, including those for the Journal of Finance, Management Science, and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. He is the author of Derivatives Markets, now in its second edition, and Fundamentals of Derivatives Markets, both published Pearson Higher Education. He received a BA in Economics from the University of North Carolina and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.