The Yale School of Management

Andrew Metrick ’89 will be Yale’s inaugural Janet L. Yellen professor of finance and management, the School of Management announced on Thursday.

The decision to appoint Metrick to the professorship was made by University President Peter Salovey and approved by the Yale Corporation. University Provost Ben Polak, and the deans of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and SOM jointly recommended Metrick to the new chair. The Janet L. Yellen professorship was endowed by Charles Ellis ’59 in the name of Janet Yellen GRD ’71, who became the first female chair of the United States Federal Reserve upon her appointment by Barack Obama in 2014.

“I am very, very honored and happy to be the inaugural holder of this title,” said Metrick, who has taught at SOM since 2008. “Dr. Yellen is a great example for any economist who aspires to be engaged with the real world outside of academics too.”

Metrick was previously the Theodore Nierenberg professor of corporate governance and was later named the Michael H. Jordan professor of finance and management in 2011. His teaching and research focus on financial crises, stability and risk management, and he graduated from Yale with a joint bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics. During his time as an undergraduate student at Yale, Metrick was a research assistant for Nobel Laureate and economics professor James Tobin. Metrick pointed out that Yellen also studied under Tobin as a graduate student at Yale and said that given his research interests in finance, a professorship in Yellen’s name is particularly apt.

Aside from teaching undergraduate, graduate and Coursera courses on financial crises and risk management, Metrick also founded and continues to serve as the director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability, a research group whose mission is to create, disseminate and preserve knowledge about financial crises. He also helped establish the masters’ program in systemic risk at SOM.

According to Ellis — in whose honor SOM’s popular cafe, “Charley’s Place,” is named — Metrick is the perfect incumbent for the Yellen chair, both because of his talents and drive to serve society and the initiatives he has undertaken at SOM.

“Andrew and Janet will enjoy a special friendship with each other,” said Ellis, who previously worked with Yellen at the Corporation. “Janet Yellen is a superb public servant with an inspiring devotion to our nation and the world and to rigorously informed wisdom in service to society … She is a great role model for Yale women and men.”

Ellis also praised Yellen for having provided the American people with exemplary leadership in an era of “unusual complexity and uncertainty.” He said she is an exemplar of the great Yale tradition of economists who serve the nation — following an example set by the likes of Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller and former Yale Provost William Nordhaus.

According to Acting Dean of SOM Anjani Jain, Metrick’s scholarly contributions and intellectual leadership make him the ideal faculty member to become the inaugural Janet L. Yellen professor at Yale.

“We are truly delighted to see this honor conferred upon Professor Metrick, whose pioneering work on financial stability, the regulation of systemic risk and the management of financial crises is directly relevant to the work of central banks worldwide,” Jain said.

Assistant Dean of Faculty and Curriculum at SOM Gabriel Rossi noted that named professorships honor faculty for their exemplary service and research accomplishments and said there could be “no better fit” for the new professorship than Metrick.

Rossi, who said he was “very excited” about the new chair, also noted that Metrick’s devotion to improving scholars’ and professionals’ understanding and management of systemic risk encompasses both teaching and research. He pointed out that Metrick served on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisors from August 2009 to July 2010 and as a senior financial economist on the President’s Economic Recovery Board after the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, where he worked extensively on what would become the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

For Metrick, there is no one particular highlight from his time at SOM. Rather, he said, he enjoys the SOM community and hopes that the school will “keep up with the good work” and continue on its “sharp upward trajectory.”

Metrick served as deputy dean of SOM from 2010 to 2016.

Saumya Malhotra | saumya.malhotra@yale.edu