Professor Ulrike Malmendier to serve as a top economic advisor to Germany

Professor Ulrike Malmendier (© 2015, Edward Caldwell, All Rights Reserved)

Professor Ulrike Malmendier was appointed today to the German Council of Economic Experts, which serves as the country’s top government advisory board on economic policy.

Malmendier, the Edward J. and Mollie Arnold Professor of Finance at the Haas School and a professor in U.C. Berkeley’s Department of Economics, is a pioneer in the field of behavioral economics and finance and among the most-cited economists in the world.

Malmendier said she is excited to contribute to economic policy-making in Germany. “I hope my expertise and international perspective will be helpful,” she wrote in a tweet of the appointment, which runs through 2026.

In an interview with the German business publication Handelsblatt, Malmendier also said she aims to bring an international perspective and also to speed up the work of the five-member council, which issues a lengthy annual report. She said the council should weigh in more frequently on current events, such as discussions on whether to impose a gas embargo on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

Malmendier will also bring a behavioral economics perspective to the council. Her research focuses on the intersection of economics and finance, and how psychology and experience influence how people make economic decisions. She had researched the impact of economic shocks, such as high inflation or unemployment, on later economic behavior—for example, the long-term frugality of “Depression babies.”

Malmendier was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2017, and won the prestigious Fischer Black Prize from the American Finance Association in 2013, for the originality and creativity of her research. She was inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.

Read the German Council of Economic Advisors announcement.