The UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) community is deeply saddened by the unexpected death of our colleague and friend, Professor Bruce Lehmann on Saturday, June 2, 2018. He was 62.
Lehmann was a noted professor of finance economics who played an important role in the development of GPS, from its earliest days as the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) to the present.
Lehmann came to UC San Diego from his tenured professorship at Columbia University in 1991 and served as one of GPS’s first faculty members in the field of management. Then only five years old, the inclusion of finance and management in the School’s international affairs curriculum made it unusual amongst its peers.
“Bruce was a catalytic force in the School’s early years. He was an outstanding scholar who brought with him an expertise that transformed our curriculum, enabling the School to differentiate itself from its competitors,” notes GPS Dean Peter Cowhey.
Early in his career, Lehmann quickly distinguished himself, acquiring a reputation as a noted young scholar with publications in leading journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, Macroeconomic Dynamics, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Econometrics.
Lehmann earned a bachelors in economics and history from Washington University in 1977, with inclusion in the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago, in 1979 and 1983 respectively.
He was a specialist in financial economics, with expertise in the pricing of capital assets, their volatility and the markets in which they trade. His main research interests included empirical tests of asset pricing models, the analysis of short-run stock price fluctuations and the microstructure of securities markets, with recent emphasis on the behavior of Japanese financial markets.
Lehmann spent nearly ten years with the Department of Economics, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University (1981-91), with visiting professorships and fellowships at UCLA, Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the National Bureau
of Economic Research (John M. Olin Fellow) and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Lehmann also spent a year at California Institute of Technology during a sabbatical from UC San Diego.
At GPS, Lehmann taught core courses in Finance, Risk Management, Market Microstructure and Game Theory and Strategy. Throughout the years he also taught Investments, Entrepreneurship, Corporate Finance and Derivative Asset Markets, plus others in campus units like the Department of Economics.
“Bruce made valuable contributions to our School and to UC San Diego. He used his skills to help where he could, be it with curriculum development, to the faculty appointment system to the administration of the endowment funds. He gave freely of himself and was quick with an empathic nod. Bruce liked to be a part of the solution, always ready to jump into problem solving and move the faculty forward,” said GPS Founding Dean Peter Gourevitch.
Lehmann served in many scholarly societies and organization, including the National Bureau of Economic Research (faculty research fellow, and Director, Market Microstructure Research Group), American Economic Association, American Finance Association, European Finance Association and Western Finance Association (Director).
Lehmann was founding coeditor of the Journal of Financial Markets and served as associate editor of the Review of Financial Studies and the Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. He served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Investment Technology Group, Inc. and on the boards of First Boston Investment Funds, Inc. and BEA Associates, Inc.
His campus commitments were numerous, and included GPS Admissions Committee, GPS Library Task Force, UC San Diego Faculty Welfare Committee (Vice Chair), and long stints on the UC San Diego Committee on Investments and the Investment Committee of the UC Retirement System and Endowment. Perhaps one of his most influential appointments was to the Committee on Academic Personnel, which reviews all UC San Diego faculty files for appointment and promotion. Expertise garnered by this service proved invaluable to his colleagues at GPS.
Bruce will be warmly remembered for his kindness, thoughtfulness and dedication to the community of GPS. His family will hold a memorial service in his honor several months from now and will invite the campus community to attend.
