Roland G. Fryer, Jr.

Roland Gerhard Fryer, Jr.
File:FRYER1.JPG
Born	(1977-06-04) June 4, 1977 Daytona Beach, Florida
Nationality	American
Institution	Harvard University
Field	Social economics, political economics
School or tradition	Chicago School of Economics
Alma mater	Pennsylvania State University (Ph.D. 2002) University of Texas at Arlington (B.A. 1998)
Influences	Gary Becker Steven Levitt Glenn Loury Tomas Sjöström
Awards	2011 MacArthur Fellow Calvó-Armengol International Prize (2012) John Bates Clark Medal (2015)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Roland Gerhard Fryer, Jr. (born June 4, 1977) is an American economist and the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

He also maintains offices at the National Bureau of Economic Research and W. E. B. Du Bois Institute. In 2007, at age 30, he became the youngest African-American to ever receive tenure at Harvard. He was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow and received the 2015 John Bates Clark Medal. Fryer is widely regarded to be one of black America and Harvard's rising stars, having published numerous economics-related papers in prominent academic journals over the past few years. The New York Times ran an extensive profile of Fryer, entitled "Toward a Unified Theory of Black America," in March 2005 that dealt extensively with Fryer's rough upbringing: Fryer's mother left when he was very young, and his father, who beat his son, was convicted of rape, effectively leaving Fryer to fend for himself. Fryer became a "full fledged gangster by his teens".

Fryer grew up in Lewisville, Texas, where he had moved with his abusive father at the age of 4. Attending Lewisville High School, he starred in football and basketball, earning an athletic scholarship from the University of Texas at Arlington. However, he never actually played for the Texas–Arlington Mavericks; instead he decided to embrace academics, joining the Honors College, whose dean helped find him an academic scholarship. He graduated magna cum laude in 1998 after two and a half years while holding down a full-time job. Fryer completed his Ph.D. in economics from Penn State in 2002. He also conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago with economist Gary Becker. Over the past three years, Fryer has collaborated with several other academics, including Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economist and author of Freakonomics, Glenn Loury, a Brown University economist, and Edward Glaeser, an urban economist at Harvard.

Upon completing a three year fellowship with the Harvard Society of Fellows at the end of the 2005–2006 academic year, Fryer joined Harvard's economics department as an assistant professor. In 2005, Fryer was also selected as one of the first Fletcher Foundation Fellows. Recently, Fryer has begun work on the Opportunity NYC project, which will study how students in low-performing schools respond to financial incentives. Fryer is currently working as the CEO of the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University. The Economist lists Fryer as one of the top eight young economists in the world. In 2011, Fryer was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly referred to as a "Genius Grant". He is the recipient of the 2015 John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."

External links

• Roland Fryer's Home Page at Harvard University
• Fryer's curriculum vitae
• American Inequality Lab
• Article on Roland Fryer in The American magazine