Roland G. Fryer, Jr.

Roland Gerhard Fryer, Jr. ( born June 4, 1977) is an American economist and professor at Harvard University, where he holds the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics. Fryers focus of research focuses on the social economy, the application of economic theory and in particular applied microeconomics. 2008 Fryer was chosen for its socio-economic research on the causes of below-average economic performance of African-Americans by The Economist to one of eight top young economists. Furthermore Fryer was named one Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation for his work on the causes and consequences of ethnicity and economic inequality for the distribution of wealth in American society, 2011.

Training

After Fryer 1998 B. A. had received in Economics with a grade of magna cum laude from the University of Texas, Arlington, he moved to the Pennsylvania State University. From this he won the 2002 for his thesis "Mathematical models of discrimination and inequality " ( Mathematical Models of Discrimination and Inequality ), supervised by Tomas Sjöström, a Ph.D. awarded in economics.

Professional career

After receiving his PhD at Pennsylvania State University Fryer worked from 2003 to 2006 as a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows of Harvard University. At the same time he began working as a Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research working. In 2006, Fryer then a position as Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he was promoted to full professor in 2007 and 2009 was transferred to M. Beren Professor of Economics. In addition, Fryer is since 2006 a Faculty Associate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and was from 2006 to 2008 Deputy Director of the Du Bois Institute for African and African- American Research. In 2008 he founded at Harvard University, the Education Innovation Laboratory, a research center which bridge the gap between the educational attainment various students and student groups (eg, differentiated by gender, ethnicity, socio -economic backgrounds, etc. ) is dedicated to.

Research

According to the economics publication database IDEAS Fryer part in the overall ranking of the 5 % of most research economists (Rank 1711). The most cited, along with Steven Levitt has written articles Fryers entitled Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School ( 2004). In this article, Fryer and Levitt examine the causes of the differences between the educational achievements of African-American and white students and be able to demonstrate that the differences between the two groups in kindergarten are not significant, but fall back African American students during the first two years of school significantly behind white students. They also find evidence that differences in school quality explain a significant part of the differences in performance, but also that alternative hypotheses are not empirically proven by the study.

Articles (Selection )

• Fryer, Roland G., Steven Levitt (2004): Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School, in: The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol 86, No. 2, pp. 447-464.