Starr grew up in Los Angeles where he attended high school. He attended UCLA and Reed College before obtaining his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Stanford in 1966. He completed his PhD in economics at Stanford in 1972. His dissertation was supervised by Kenneth Arrow.
Starr, Ross M. (1969), "Quasi-equilibria in markets with non-convex preferences (Appendix 2: The Shapley–Folkman theorem, pp. 35–37)", Econometrica, 37 (1): 25–38, CiteSeerX10.1.1.297.8498, doi:10.2307/1909201, JSTOR1909201
Starr, Ross M., ed. (1989). General equilibrium models of monetary economies: Studies in the static foundations of monetary theory. Economic theory, econometrics, and mathematical economics. Academic Press. p. 351. ISBN978-0-12-663970-4.