Olivia S. Mitchell (born 1953) is an American
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor at
The Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
.
Her interests focus on
pension
A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...
s and
social security
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specificall ...
, and she is the executive director of the Pension Research Council, the oldest U.S. center devoted to scholarship and policy-relevant research on
retirement
Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours or workload.
Many people choose to retire when they are elderly or incapable of doing their j ...
security.
She also heads Wharton's Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research.
[
]
Career
Mitchell joined The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, having served from 1978 to 1993 as a professor at Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
; she also visited Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, Goethe University, Singapore Management University
The Singapore Management University (SMU) is a public autonomous university in Singapore. The university is the only city campus in Singapore. It ranks third in Asia as a specialist university, behind Hong Kong University of Science and Techn ...
, and the University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensive ...
.[ She serves as an Independent Director for the ]Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company with corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California; operational headquarters in Manhattan; and managerial offices throughout the United States and intern ...
Funds Board of Trustees,[ and is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She has served on the advisory board to the Singaporean Central Provident Fund,][ the executive board of the American Economic Association][ and chaired the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession.][ In 2001 she served on the bipartisan President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security. She has worked as a co-Principal Investigator for the Health and Retirement Study for two decades, and she is a co-investigator for AHEAD/Health and Retirement Studies at the ]University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
's Retirement Research Center. In 2002 and again in 2010, she was the Metzler Bank Visiting Professor at Goethe University.[ At Wharton, she currently is a professor of Business Economics and Public Policy, and Insurance and Risk Management.
]
Education
Mitchell earned her BA in Economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
with honors from Harvard University and her MS and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...
. She also received honorary degrees from the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
, the University of St. Gallen
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
, and Goethe University Frankfurt
Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...
.
Works
Mitchell has published widely on pensions, social security reform, retirement security, and financial literacy. Her work is highly regarded: in 2018, her paper was awarded the Best Paper Award on Behavioral Aspects of Insurance Mathematics, and in 2017 she was granted the Robert C Witt Award for Best Paper in the ''Journal of Risk and Insurance''; she also received the EBRI Lillywhite Award the same year. In 2008 and again in 2017 she was awarded the Roger F. Murray Prize from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance.[ In 2016 she was selected as a CRAIN "Top 100 Innovators, Disruptors, and Change-Makers in Business",] while in 2011 she was named one of the “25 Most Influential People” and “50 Top Women in Wealth” by Investment Advisor Magazine; in 2010 she received the Retirement Income Industry Association Award for Achievement in Applied Retirement Research. In 2008 Mitchell received the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, and in 2007 she received the Fidelity Pyramid Research Institute Prize for her co-authored study on financial literacy. In 2003 she received the Premio Internazionale dell'Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni INA Assitalia S.p.A. was an insurance company, operating on the Italian market from 1912 to 2013. In the last years it belonged to the Assicurazioni Generali group.
History
INA, Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni, was a public entity special ...
, awarded at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, Italy,[ and in 1999 her co-authored work received the Paul A. Samuelson Award for Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security from TIAA-CREF.][
]
Selected recent academic articles
* Lusardi, Annamaria, Pierre-Carl Michaud, and Olivia S. Mitchell. (2017).
“Optimal Financial Literacy and Wealth Inequality.”
Journal of Political Economy. 125(2): 431–477.
* Brown, Jeffrey R., Arie Kapteyn, Erzo Luttmer, and Olivia S. Mitchell. (2017)
“Cognitive Constraints on Valuing Annuities.”
Journal of the European Economic Association. 15(2): 429–462.
* Maurer, Raimond, Olivia S. Mitchell, Ralph Rogalla, and Ivonne Siegelin. (2016)
“Accounting and Actuarial Smoothing of Retirement Payouts in Participating Life Annuities.”
Insurance: Mathematics and Economics 71: 268–283.
* Kim, Hugh Hoikwang, Raimond Maurer, and Olivia S. Mitchell. (2016)
“Time is Money: Rational Life Cycle Inertia and the Delegation of Investment Management.”
Journal of Financial Economics. 121(2): 231–448.
* Dimmock, Stephen G., Roy Kouwenberg, Olivia S. Mitchell and Kim Peijnenburg. (2016)
“Ambiguity Aversion and Household Portfolio Choice Puzzles: Empirical Evidence.”
Journal of Financial Economics. 119(3): 559–577.
* Brown, Jeffrey R., Arie Kapteyn, and Olivia S. Mitchell. (2016)
“Framing and Claiming: How Information Framing Affects Expected Social Security Claiming Behavior.”
Journal of Risk and Insurance. 83(1): 139–162.
* Hubener, Andreas, Raimond Maurer, and Olivia S. Mitchell. (2015
“How Family Status and Social Security Claiming Options Shape Optimal Life Cycle Portfolios.”
Review of Financial Studies, 29(1): 937–978.
Selected books
* Olivia S. Mitchell, P. Brett Hammond, and Stephen Utkus, eds
"Financial Decision Making and Retirement Security in an Aging World".
Oxford University Press. 2017.
* Olivia S. Mitchell, Raimond Maurer, and J. Michael Orszag, eds
"Retirement System Risk Management: Implications of the New Regulatory Order".
Oxford University Press. 2016.
* Olivia S. Mitchell and Kent Smetters
"The Market for Retirement Financial Advice".
Oxford University Press. 2013
* Raimond Maurer, Olivia S. Mitchell, and Mark Warshawsky, eds
"Reshaping Retirement Security: Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis".
Oxford University Press. 2012.
* Olivia S. Mitchell and Annamaria Lusardi, eds
"Financial Literacy".
Oxford University Press. 2011.
* Olivia S. Mitchell, John Piggott, and Noriyuki Takayama, eds
"Securing Lifelong Retirement Income".
Oxford University Press. 2011.
* Olivia S. Mitchell and Gary W. Anderson, eds
"The Future of Public Employee Retirement Systems".
Oxford University Press. 2009.
* Brigitte Madrian, Olivia S. Mitchell, & Beth Soldo, eds
"Redefining Retirement".
Oxford University Press, 2007.
* Olivia S. Mitchell and Stephen P. Utkus, eds
"Pension Design and Structure: New Lessons from Behavioral Finance".
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004.
* Jeffrey Brown, Olivia S. Mitchell, James Poterba, and Mark Warshawsky
"The Role of Annuity Markets in Financing Retirement".
MIT Press, 2001.
References
External links
The Pension Research Council
The Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research
*
*
Curriculum Vitae
*Research Collaborations
Olivia S. Mitchell
*News Links
Olivia S. Mitchell
*Knowledge at Wharton
Olivia S. Mitchell
Interview with Olivia Mitchell: Recipient of the 2007 Carolyn Shaw Bell Award
Prof. Olivia S. Mitchell - "Retirement Advice Post-COVID"
Building Better Retirement Systems in the Wake of the Global Pandemic - Professor Olivia S. Mitchell
Olivia S. Mitchell, PhD Extended Interview 1080
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchell, Olivia S.
Living people
21st-century American economists
American women economists
Harvard University alumni
University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
University of Pennsylvania faculty
1953 births
21st-century American women