After earning his PhD,[when?] Roach was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. From 1972 until 1979, Roach served as staff economist of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C.[1] supervising the preparation of the official Federal Reserve projections of the U.S. economy. From 1979 until joining Morgan Stanley in 1982, Roach was Vice President for Economic Analysis for the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company in New York.[3]
Roach was with Morgan Stanley for 30-plus years. He was the investment bank's chief economist[1] since 1982, serving as head of the firm's global team of economists in New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Paris.[4][5] From 2007-10 he was Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia, from 2010-12 he was Non-Executive Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia, and since mid-2010 he has been a Senior Fellow at Yale University.[3]