Sad News - Passing of Steve Ross

From: James Poterba <poterba_at_nber.org>
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2017 10:00:10 -0500

Dear Asset Pricing and Corporate Finance Program Members -

I am very sorry to convey the news that Steve Ross, a Research Associate
in the NBER's Asset Pricing Program, suffered a sudden and fatal heart
attack yesterday at his home in Connecticut. Steve was the Franco
Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics at the MIT Sloan School.
Prior to joining the MIT faculty, he taught at Yale and the University
of Pennsylvania. Steve made extraordinary contributions to both asset
pricing and corporate finance, and was best known for his development of
the Arbitrage Pricing Theory and for his pioneering work on the pricing
of derivatives and on agency theory. He was a very successful teacher
and graduate advisor, a best-selling textbook author, and an important
professional leader. Steve served as president of the American Finance
Association in 1988, and was selected as one of the AFA's inaugural
Fellows in 2000.

Steve was an undergraduate at Caltech, and received his Ph.D. from
Harvard. At the time of his death, he was a trustee and chair of the
investment committee at Caltech. Steve received many honors over the
course of his professional career, including the Deutsche Bank Prize in
Financial Economics and the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize from the Toulouse
School of Economics. He played a central role in advancing the field of
financial economics, and he will be deeply missed.

Jim Poterba
Received on Sat Mar 04 2017 - 13:04:49 EST