Dr. Robert Nau

Biography

Robert Nau is Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, specializing in the Decision Sciences area. He obtained his PhD in Operations Research from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981 and joined Duke University's faculty in 1985, serving until 2017. Prior to Duke, he was on the faculty at the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University. Nau has also been a visiting faculty member at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore. He is recognized as an authority on mathematical models for decision making under uncertainty. His research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, and he has published extensively in leading journals, including Operations Research, Management Science, and the Journal of Economic Theory. His research incorporates the principle of no-arbitrage, a foundational concept in modern finance theory, which has implications for Bayesian statistics and game theory. Nau authored the book "Arbitrage Rational Decisions" published by Chapman Hall in 2025. In addition to his academic work, he developed forecasting software used in statistical analysis and has released internet freeware for educational purposes, which has been widely adopted by various universities.

Research Interests

Experience