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Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell, PhD

International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor, Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy, Professor of Insurance and Risk Management; Executive Director, Pension Research Council, The Wharton School

Research Interests:Economics of public and private pensions, employee benefits and compensation, risk and crisis management

About Olivia

Dr. Olivia S. Mitchell is International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor; professor of insurance and risk management; professor of business economics and public policy; executive director of the Pension Research Council; and director of the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Security, all at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Concurrently, she is also research associate at the NBER; independent director of the Allspring Mutual Fund boards; HRS co-investigator at the University of Michigan; and executive board member of the Michigan Retirement Research Center. She recently served as vice president of the American Economic Association. Her research focuses on pensions, risk management, financial literacy, household finance, and public finance. She was awarded the FINRA Investor Education Foundation Ketchum Prize; the Fidelity Pyramid Prize for research improving lifelong financial well-being; the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession; the Roger F. Murray First Prize (twice) from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance; and the Premio Internazionale Dell’Istituto Nazionale Delle Assicurazioni from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Her study of Social Security reform won the Paul Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security from TIAA-CREF. Most recently, she received the 2021 Robert C. Witt Award for her study with Dan Gottlieb titled “Narrow Framing and Long-Term Care Insurance” in the Journal of Risk and Insurance and the 2022 Kulp-Wright Book Award for her book Remaking Retirement: Debt in an Aging Economy, both from the American Risk and Insurance Association. She earned her MA and PhD degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her BA with honors in Economics from Harvard University.

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Executive Education Programs Taught

International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans: Investment Courses

Investment Management Courses, a joint venture between Wharton and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, will help you improve your investment management.