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Bio: Annamaria Lusardi

Annamaria Lusardi is the Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar in Economics and Accountancy at the George Washington University School of Business. Previously, she was the Joel Z. and Susan Hyatt Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, where she taught for twenty years. She has also taught at Princeton University, the University of Chicago Public Policy School, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Columbia Business School. In 2008 she was a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School. Moreover, she is the Academic Director of the Global Center for Financial Literacy, and the Director of the Financial Literacy Center, a joint Center with the Rand Corporation and the Wharton School created with the support of the Social Security Administration. Dr Lusardi won numerous research awards. Among them is a research fellowship from the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, a faculty fellowship from the John M. Olin Foundation, and a junior and senior faculty fellowship from Dartmouth College. She is the recipient of the Fidelity Pyramid Prize, a $50,000 award to authors of published applied research that best helps address the goal of improving lifelong financial well-being for Americans.

Abstract

In an increasingly risky and globalized marketplace, people must be able to make well-informed financial decisions. New international research demonstrates that financial illiteracy is widespread in both well-developed and rapidly changing markets. Women are less financially literate than men, the young and the old are less financially literate than the middle-aged, and more educated people are more financially knowledgeable. Most importantly, the financially literate are more likely to plan for retirement. Instrumental variables estimates show that the effects of financial literacy on retirement planning tend to be underestimated. In sum, around the world, financial literacy is critical to retirement security