Robert McDonald was a consultant in the financial markets group of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. McDonald is the Erwin P. Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. He was previously on the faculty at Boston University and the University of Chicago.

McDonald’s research has been published in the Journal of Monetary Economics, International Economic Review, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Computational Finance, and Journal of Futures Markets. He is also the author of Derivatives Markets, now in its second edition.

McDonald received a B.A. in economics from the University of North Carolina and Ph.D. degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.