Olivia Mitchell, PhD

About Olivia

Olivia S. Mitchell is the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor, as well as 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. Concurrently, Professor Mitchell serves as a research associate at the NBER; independent director on the Allspring Mutual Fund Boards; and research fellow, Leibnitz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, Goethe University Frankfurt. She received MA and PhD degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a BA in Economics from Harvard University. Professor Mitchell has been awarded the Doctor Rerum Publicarum Honoris Causa, Goethe University of Frankfurt; Doctor Oeconomiae Honoris Causa, University of St. Gallen; and an honorary master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Mitchell’s professional interests focus on public and private pensions, insurance and risk management, financial literacy, and public finance. Her research explores how systematic longevity risk and financial crises can shape household portfolios and work patterns over the life cycle, the economics and finance of defined contribution pensions, financial literacy and wealth accumulation, and claiming behavior for Social Security benefits. Her research has appeared in leading academic journals including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Review of Finance, and it has been featured in outlets such as The Economist, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She has published more than 300 books and articles, and she is a senior editor of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance.

Professor Mitchell was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 2023, and she received the CIO Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024. She received 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 Dell’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. In 2010, Wealth Management Magazine named her one of the “50 Top Women in Wealth”; in 2010 she also received the Retirement Income Industry Association’s Award for Achievement in Applied Retirement Research. Investment Advisor Magazine named her one of the “25 Most Influential People” and “50 Top Women in Wealth” in 2011; in 2015, she was named a “Top 10 Women Economist” by the World Economic Forum; and in 2016 Crain Communications named her a “Top 100 Innovator, Disruptor, and Change-Maker in Business.” In 2019, Worth.com named her a “Top 16 Powerhouse Female Economist.”

Previously Professor Mitchell chaired Wharton’s Department of Insurance and Risk Management, and she taught for 16 years at Cornell University. She was a commissioner on the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security and a member of the U.S. Department of Labor’s ERISA Advisory Council; she also served on the board of directors of Alexander and Alexander Services, Inc., the board of the American Economic Association, the advisory board for the Central Provident Fund of Singapore, the National Academy of Social Insurance board, the board of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, and the GAO advisory board. She also co-chaired the Technical Panel on Trends in Retirement Income and Saving for the Social Security Advisory Council, and she served as vice president for the American Economic Association.

Professor Mitchell has visited and taught at numerous institutions including Harvard University, the NBER, Cornell University, the Goethe University of Frankfurt, the Singapore Management University, and the University of New South Wales. Professor Mitchell has consulted with many public and private groups including the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund, the Investment Company Institute, the President’s Economic Forum, the World Bank, the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, the White House Conference on Social Security, the Q Group, and the Association of Flight Attendants. She also testified before numerous committees of the U.S. Congress, the U.K. Parliament, the Australian Parliament, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Brazilian Senate. She speaks Spanish and Portuguese, having lived and worked in Latin America, Europe, and Australasia.

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