[1][2] He joined the University of Rochester's economics department in its founding year,[3] eventually becoming departmental chair from 1966 to 1974, during which he mentored future Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler.
[4][5] From 1974 to 1982, he served as the dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
From 1977, he has been a member of the executive committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, eventually becoming chairman of NBER.
[9] During his tenure, the school was named one of the top 50 undergraduate business programs by the U.S. News & World Report.
As dean of the business college, he also helped found the U.S. Business School in Prague, an MBA program aimed at transforming the Czech economy from socialist to free market.