About

Jeff Mercer, PhD, is the Centennial Bank Chair in Finance, director of the Texas Tech School of Banking, and director of the Williams Institute for Community Banking and Finance at Texas Tech University. He also serves on the faculty of the Southwest Graduate School of Banking (SWGSB) at Southern Methodist University. Mercer is a principal of McDonald Capital Management LLC, a registered investment advisory firm located in Lubbock, Texas, where he helps direct the firm's investment research and management of over $220 million in investment assets.

Prior to joining Texas Tech in 2002, Mercer was director of investment research at Ibbotson Associates, a Chicago-based investment consulting firm now wholly owned by Morningstar, Inc. He also served on the graduate business faculty at Northern Illinois University where he held positions as finance faculty member, finance department chair and acting associate dean of the college of business. He was also the founding director of the Northern Illinois Chartered Financial Analyst Review Course, a non-credit semester-long review course for practicing financial analysts pursuing the CFA designation.

Mercer has received competitive research awards from The Research Foundation of the CFA Institute, The Chicago Investment Analysts Society, the Foundation for Managed Derivatives Research and the Kemper Foundation. His research has appeared in leading outlets such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial Research, Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Futures Markets, Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Wealth Management, Journal of Fixed Income, Journal of Investing, Journal of Alternative Investments, Financial Review and Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics.

Mercer, or press coverage of his work, has appeared on or in Forbes, ABC World News This Morning, CNN.com, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, USAToday, SmartMoney, Financial Times, The MotleyFool, Fox Business News and The CBS Early Show.