Ulrike Malmendier

Ulrike Malmendier is the Edward J. and Mollie Arnold Professor of Finance at Berkeley Haas and Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley. Ulrike Malmendier received her PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University in 2002, and her PhD in Law from the University of Bonn in 2000. Malmendier has been a Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley’s Department of Economics since 2006 and holds joint professorships in economics and finance at Berkeley, where she is the founding co-chair of the Initiative in Behavioral Finance and Economics. Previously, she was a faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and had visiting positions at Princeton University, Chicago Booth School of Business.

The German chancellor and his cabinet appointed Malmendier to the German Council of Economic Experts in August 2022. She is a founding board member of AFFECT, the AFA’s American Female Finance Committee, a member of various academic boards, and, most recently, has been elected to the leadership of the American Finance Association. She will assume the role of VP, president-elect, and then president in 2023-2025. She is also a founder and co-organizer of BEAM and SITE Psychology & Economics, the leading conferences in Behavioral Economics.

Malmendier’s research expertise lies in the intersection of economics and finance, and specifically how individuals make mistakes and systematically biased decisions (Behavioral Economics, Behavioral Finance). She is one of the most cited researchers of her generation in economics and finance. Her work includes research on CEO overconfidence, the long-term frugality of “Depression babies”, and the decision-making behind gym membership. She has recently been interested in the impact of economic shocks, such as high inflation or unemployment, on later economic behavior of individuals who lived through these periods.

Malmendier is a recipient of the prestigious Fischer Black Prize from the American Finance Association for the best finance researcher under 40 in 2013, which noted the originality and creativity of her research in corporate finance, behavioral economics and finance, contract theory, and the history of the firm. Malmendier was elected Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2021 and inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.  Her numerous honors and prizes include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the Bessel Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Her research has been honored several times with the Citation of Excellence by Emerald Management Reviews, including for her work on CEO overconfidence and financial expertise of directors. She also received the Fordham/NYU “Rising Star in Finance” award in 2012.