Ulrike Malmendier

Ulrike Malmendier is the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Finance at the Haas School of Business and Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research lies at the intersection of behavioural economics and finance, including work on CEO overconfidence, the lasting effects of economic shocks on individual financial behaviour, and contract theory.

From 2022 to 2026, Malmendier served on the German Council of Economic Experts (Sachverständigenrat), the five-member body that advises the German government on macroeconomic policy. She was the first Council member to hold a professorship outside Germany.

In 2013, she received the Fischer Black Prize from the American Finance Association, awarded biennially to the leading finance scholar under 40 — the first woman to receive it. She is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before joining Berkeley in 2006, she was at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is a Research Associate at the NBER and a Research Affiliate of the CEPR.

Malmendier holds a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University (2002) and a PhD in Law (summa cum laude) from the University of Bonn (2000).