Olivia S. Mitchell, PhD is the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor; Professor of Insurance/Risk Management and Business Economics/Policy; Executive Director of the Pension Research Council; and Director of the Boettner Center on Pensions and Retirement Research; all at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Mitchell is also Research Associate at the NBER; Independent Director on the Wells Fargo Fund Boards; Co-Investigator for the HRS at the University of Michigan; and Executive Board member for the Michigan Retirement Research Center. She also serves on the Advisory Committee of the Retirement and Saving Institute at the HEC Montreal; and she served as Vice President of the American Economic Association.
Professor Mitchell’s research focuses on pensions, risk management, financial literacy, household finance, and public finance. She received 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; and the Roger F. Murray First Prize (twice) from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance. She was also honored with the Premio Internazionale Dellâ’Istituto Nazionale Delle Assicurazioni from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome. Her study of Social Security reform won the Paul Samuelson Award for “Outstanding Writing on Lifelong Financial Security” from TIAA-CREF. Dr. Mitchell received MA and PhD degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
