Rate My Professor Timothy Crack

Professor Timothy Falcon Crack is Professor Emeritus of Finance in the Department of Accountancy and Finance at the University of Otago. He joined the department in 2004 as a chaired full professor of Finance and retired in 2021, maintaining an office at the university to mentor junior faculty and meet with students. Crack completed PhD coursework at MIT and Harvard, earning his PhD in Financial Economics from MIT. He holds degrees in Mathematics with substantial Statistics, Finance, and Financial Economics, along with a postgraduate diploma in Accounting and Finance from Otago, and the Investment Management Certificate from the UK Society of Investment Professionals. Before joining Otago, he taught undergraduate, MBA, and PhD courses at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. In industry, he headed quantitative active equity research for the UK and Continental Europe in the London office of the then-world's largest institutional asset manager. He has consulted independently for the New York Stock Exchange and a foreign government body on financial market investigations.

Crack's research focuses on empirical capital markets, quantitative active equity trading strategies, derivatives, econometrics, market microstructure, job interview techniques for finance practitioners and academics, and pedagogy in mathematics, statistics, and finance. His publications appear in leading journals including The Journal of Finance, The Financial Analysts Journal, The Journal of Futures Markets, The Journal of Financial Education, The Journal of Business, Physica A, and Accounting and Finance. Key books include Foundations for Scientific Investing: Capital Markets Intuition and Critical Thinking Skills (14th ed., 2025), Basic Black-Scholes: Option Pricing and Trading (7th ed., 2024), and Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews (Revised 25th ed., 2024). He has supervised or co-supervised more than a dozen graduate students, including at least six PhDs. Crack has won six university teaching awards and received nominations for at least five others.