Annamaria Lusardi

Annamaria Lusardi earned a PhD in economics from Princeton University and began her academic career at Dartmouth College before moving to The George Washington University, where she held several chairs in economics and accountancy. She has also taught at Princeton, the University of Chicago and Columbia Business School. She founded the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center and became the inaugural editor of the Journal of Financial Literacy and Wellbeing.¹

Her research examines how financial knowledge relates to saving, debt, retirement planning, market participation and the capacity to absorb shocks. With Olivia Mitchell, she developed the Big Three, a short instrument that became an international reference for measuring understanding of compound interest, inflation and diversification. The measure does not capture every aspect of financial capability, but it made previously underdocumented knowledge gaps comparable across populations.^2,4

Annamaria Lusardi joined Stanford on September 1, 2023. The initiative she leads, renamed the Initiative for Financial Decision-Making in 2024, brings together Stanford GSB, SIEPR and the Department of Economics. It combines teaching, research, technology and partnerships to broaden access to evidence-based financial education. Ooléle recaps preserve the boundary between durable principles and products, accounts or policies that belong to the United States.^5,6