Bob Rasche was a faculty member in the Department from 1972 until his retirement in 1999, when he accepted a position as the Research Director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Bob was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He received his BA in economics and mathematics from Yale University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan in 1966. Prior to joining the Department at MSU, Bob held positions at MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Rasche’s research focused on monetary policy and its impact on the macroeconomy, and he was recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on this topic. His work appeared in the American Economic Review and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, among many others.
In his work, he often collaborated with other leading experts, MSU colleagues, and former graduate students. Indeed, two of his papers were coauthored with Nobel Laureate Franco Modigliani.
Throughout his years at MSU, Bob maintained or developed research and consulting relationships with the St. Louis Fed, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Economic Outlook Center at Arizona State University, and the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies at the Bank of Japan.
During his time at MSU, Bob taught macroeconomics and money and banking to hundreds of MSU economics students. He also taught our Ph.D.-level courses in macroeconomics regularly, and supervised theses for a number of graduate students who went on to successful careers.
From 1980 to 1984, Bob served as Chair of the Department. During his term, he oversaw the hiring of a large number of young economists, many of whom went on to become prominent researchers and pillars of our department. Following his retirement from the St. Louis Fed, he became an inaugural member of the MSU Department of Economics Advisory Board on which he served until 2016.
In 1988, Michigan State University named him as a recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award.
At the St. Louis Fed, Bob joined his research collaborator, Bill Poole, who was President of the Bank. In 2009, he was promoted to Executive Vice President and Senior Policy Adviser at the St. Louis Fed, and he retired a second time in 2011.
While at MSU, Bob and his wife Dottie lived in East Lansing. Rasche died in 2016.