Economics professor earns honorary doctorate

Prof Robert Fry Engle

“The university will confer an honorary doctorate on Prof Engle in recognition of his pioneering discovery of a method for analysing unpredictable movements in financial market prices and interest rates. This method, employed by private and public sector economic researchers and practitioners operating as financial markets analysts and economic decision-makers, has become indispensable,” said the Executive Dean of the College of Business and Economics (CBE), Prof Daneel van Lill.

"His research has also brought into being, innovative statistical methods such as co-integration, common features, autoregressive conditional duration and more recently, dynamic conditional correlation models. UJ's CBE is committed to equipping our students with high-level applied econometric competence in order to contribute at the forefront of econometric modelling and forecasting to the benefit of private and public organisations involved in the repositioning of the African continent," said Van Lill.

Van Lill points out that the University is honoured by Prof Engle's acceptance of an UJ Honorary Doctorate in Economics. "The commitment of the CBE School of Economics to quality econometric education and training will be enhanced through association with Prof Robert Engle - a global leader in econometric risk-modelling," he says.

Prof Engle is currently hosting a two-day workshop (19-20 Feb 2018) on Advance Risk Modelling, followed by a Public lecture where he will provide insight on 'how much risk is too much?' The public lecture is scheduled for Wednesday, 21 February 2018.