Professor
Finance
Leading expert on behavioral science, behavioral finance, and corporate finance.
About
Ulrike Malmendier is the Edward J. and Mollie Arnold Professor of Finance at Berkeley Haas and Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley. Her research interests include corporate finance, behavioral economics/behavioral finance; economics of organizations; contract theory; law and economics; law and finance. Her area of focus is the intersection of economics and finance, and why and how individuals make decision—specifically how individuals make mistakes and systematically biased decisions. Some of her work includes research on CEO overconfidence, the long-term frugality of Depression “babies” and the decision-making behind gym membership.
In 2013, Malmendier was awarded the prestigious Fisher Black Prize from the American Finance Association, given biennially to the top financial scholar under the age of 40. The award citation referred to Malmendier’s work in corporate finance; behavioral economics and finance; and contract theory and noted the originality and creativity of her research.
Malmendier has received fellowships and grants from numerous institutions in the U.S. and Europe and many honors, awards, and prizes, including the 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, as well as several Emerald Citations of Excellence by Emerald and Distinguished or Keynote Speaker engagements. In 2015 she was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California at Berkeley’s most prestigious honor for teaching.
She received her PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University in 2002, and her PhD in Law (summa cum laude) from the University of Bonn in 2000. She joined Berkeley in 2006 as an Assistant Professor, after having been at Stanford as Assistant Professor of Finance since 2002. She is also a research associate at NBER—Corporate Finance and Labor Economics—and a faculty research fellow at IZA, a CESifo affiliate, and a CEPR research affiliate. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Max-Planck Institute in Bonn, a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Expertise and Research Interests
- Behavioral Finance
- Behavioral Economics
- Corporate Finance
- Law and Finance
- Contract Theory
- Economics of Organizations
- Law and Economics
- Ulrike Malmendier, F. D’Acunto, J. Ospina and M. Weber. Exposure to Grocery Prices and Inflation Expectations. Journal of Political Economy.
Forthcoming - Ulrike Malmendier and M. Guenzel. Behavioral Corporate Finance: Life Cycle of a CEO Career. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance.
2020 - Ulrike Malmendier, S. Nagel and Z. Yan. The Making of Hawks and Doves: Inflation Experiences on the FOMC. Journal of Monetary Economics.
2020 - Ulrike Malmendier and A. Szeidl. Fishing for Fools. Games and Economic Behavior.
2020 - Ulrike Malmendier, D. Pouzo and V. Vanasco. Investor Experiences and Financial Market Dynamics. Journal of Financial Economics.
2020 - Ulrike Malmendier, D. Pouzo and V. Vanasco. Investor Experiences and International Capital Flows. Journal of International Economics.
2020 - Ulrike Malmendier, C. Laundenbach and Niessen-Ruenzi. Emotional Tagging and Belief Formation – The Long-Lasting Effects of Experiencing Communism. AEA Papers & Proceedings.
2019 - Ulrike Malmendier, D. Bernheim, S. DellaVigna, and D. Laibson. Behavioral Corporate Finance. Handbook of Behavioral Economics.
2018 - Ulrike Malmendier, E. Moretti and F. Peters. Winning by Losing: Evidence on Overbidding in Mergers. Review of Financial Studies.
2018 - Ulrike Malmendier and K. Schmidt. You Owe Me. American Economic Review.
2017 - Ulrike Malmendier, E. Moretti and F. Peters. Winning by Losing: Evidence on Overbidding in Mergers. Review of Financial Studies..
2016 - Ulrike Malmendier and S. Nagel. Learning from Inflation Experiences. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
2016 - Ulrike Malmendier, M. Opp and F. Saidi. Target revaluation after failed takeover attempts: Cash versus stock. Journal of Financial Economics.
2016 - Ulrike Malmendier, S. DellaVigna, J. List and G. Rao. Voting to Tell Others. Review of Economic Studies.
2015 - Ulrike Malmendier and Timothy Taylor. On the Verges of Overconfidence. Journal of Economic Perspectives.
2015 - Ulrike Malmendier and Stefan Nagel. Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect Risk-Taking?. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
2011 - Ulrike Malmendier and Young Han Lee. The Bidder’s Curse. American Economics Review.
2011 - Ulrike Malmendier and Josh Lerner. Contractibility and the Design of Research Agreements. American Economics Review.
2010 - Ulrike Malmendier. Law and Finance at the Origin. Journal of Economic Literature.
2009 - Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate. Superstar CEOs. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
2009
At Haas since 2010
2012 – present, Professor of Finance, Haas School of Business
2012 – present, Professor of Economics, University of California Berkeley
2009 – present, Research Associate, Corporate Finance and Labor Economics, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
2007 – present, Research Affiliate, Financial Economics, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
2006 – present, Research Affiliate, Labour Economics, CEPR
2006 – present, Affiliate, CESifo
2005 – present, Faculty Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
2010 – 2012, Associate Professor of Finance (with tenure), Haas School of Business
2008 – 2012, Associate Professor of Economics (with tenure), University of California, Berkeley
2006 – 2009, Faculty Research Fellow, Corporate Finance, NBER
2006 – 2008, Assistant Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley
2004 – 2009, Faculty Research Fellow, Labor Economics, NBER
2002 – 2006, Assistant Professor of Finance, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Visiting Positions
2005, Visiting Fellow, Department of Economics, Princeton University
2005, Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago
2000, Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute “Law of Common Goods,” Bonn (Germany)
1998, Visiting Scholar, Nuttfield College, Oxford University
- Guest Associate Editor, Management Science, Special Issue on Behavioral Economics and Finance
- Associate Editor, Journal of the European Economic Association
- Associate Editor, Journal of Financial Intermediation
- Associate Editor, Economic Journal
- American Finance Association, Western Finance Association, Financial Management Association, European Finance Association, Financial Intermediation Research Society (FIRS) conference, Annual Conference in Corporate Finance
- Washington University
- Memberships: Econometric Society, American Economic Association, American Finance Association
- Referee Service: Academy of Management Review, American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Econometrica, Economic Journal, Economic Letters, Experimental Economics, Financial Management, Games and Economic Behavior, German Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Journal of European Economic Association, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Public Economic Theory, Labour Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Management Science, RAND Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economics and Statistics, Review of Finance, Review of Financial Studies
- 2009-present: Telecom Council of Silicon Valley. Industry panels on IoT; SD-WAN; connected car; AI; unlicensed spectrum; national broadband plan; entertainment; wireless and government policy; 5G; small cells; and more
- 2014-present: Japan Society of Northern California. Opportunities in the On-Demand Economy; Sharing Economy in Japan; global venture capital; Silicon Valley’s return to Japan; venture capital; and more
- September 2014: CTIA – The Wireless Association, SuperMobility Conference.
- German
- Italian
Gustav Stolper Prize
Verein für Socialpolitik (German Economic Association)
2019
JFE Best Paper Prize
(Jensen Prize for Corporate Finance and Organizations, 1st prize)
2017
Guggenheim Fellow
2017
Thomson Reuter Highly Cited Researcher
2016
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2016
Bessel Prize for Outstanding Research, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
2015
Thomson Reuter Highly Cited Researcher
2015
FMA Europe Best Paper award
“M&A Negotiations and Lawyer Expertise”
2015
Citation of Excellence by Emerald Management Reviews
(one of the 50 best articles published in management in 2014) for the paper “Who makes acquisitions? CEO overconfidence and the market’s reaction”
2015
Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California, Berkeley
2015
The Fischer Black Prize
Awarded biennially by the AFA to a leading finance scholar under 40
2013
“Rising Star in Finance” award, Fordham/NYU Rising Stars Conference
New York
2012
Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow
2010 – 2012
Citation of Excellence by Emerald Management Reviews
2009
- Being a CEO is a deadly affair, new research finds, MarketWatch, 03/19/2021
- How Biases Influence CEOs Throughout Their Careers, World Economic Forum, 03/01/2021
- 2020: Things that changed in the tumultuous year may never go back to the way they were, FOX2 KTVU, 12/17/2020
- Reinventing yourself or succumbing to the crisis, El País (Spanish), 12/06/2020
- Will Gen Z ever recover from the COVID-19 recession?, Al Jazeera, 11/10/2020
- “Assuming that everything will be the same after the pandemic is a mistake”, El País (Spanish), 11/03/2020
- Economist Malmendier explains how the “experience effect” will make Covid inhibit entrepreneurship and greatly promote savings, Expansión (Spanish), 10/29/2020
- The Money Men Could Save Us. But They’re Stuck in the Seventies., The New York Times, 10/16/2020
- A new study shows that industry downturns age CEOs by an extra 1.5 years, Quartz, 09/22/2020
- How the Pandemic Will Change the Way We Manage Money Forever, Newsweek, 08/31/2020
- Psychological scars of downturns could depress growth for decades, The Economist, 08/29/2020
- Announcing the winners of the Economic Impact of Digital Technologies request for proposals, Facebook Research, 08/24/2020
- Money Stuff: Now an App Can Pitch Mergers, Bloomberg, 08/03/2020
- Inflation Expectations Are Wrong, Which Is Good, Wall Street journal, 07/14/2020
- Covid-19 scars may fade faster than we think, Financial Times, 07/02/2020
