Professor Ulrike Malmendier is the new honorary doctor of Leuphana
2023-07-06 Lüneburg/Berkeley (USA). On the occasion of this year's Dies Academicus of Leuphana University Lüneburg, Professor Ulrike Malmendier, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley, has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the School of Public Affairs. In awarding Ulrike Malmendier an honorary doctorate, the school recognizes a renowned economist who brings the insights of her own scholarly work and the current state of research to the public debate and makes an important contribution to scientific policy advice.
Ulrike Malmendier studied economics and law at the University of Bonn. There she received her doctorate in law in 2000 and her doctorate in economics from Harvard Business School two years later. She subsequently conducted research at the Universities of Chicago, Princeton and Stanford. Since 2005, she has worked as an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. More than 28,000 citations of her publications show the importance of her work, for which she has already received numerous awards. She conducts research in particular in the field of behavioral economics, focusing among other things on cognitive biases in financial decision-making and in the area of corporate governance.
Ulrike Malmendier has been a member of the German Council of Economic Experts since 2022. With its regularly published reports, the five-member German Council of Economic Experts aims to help the public and decision-makers in politics, business and society form an informed opinion on economic policy developments in Germany. She is the first Council member to hold a professorship at a university outside Germany.
In his laudatory speech for the new honorary doctor, Leuphana economics professor Mario Mechtel pointed out that Ulrike Malmendier's work is characterized not only by her significant scientific contributions, which have made her one of the most internationally renowned German economists of her generation, but also by her pioneering achievements for evidence-based scientific policy advice. Malmendier, he said, stands for the modern approach to economics driven by data and empirical analysis. Her interdisciplinary profile, the policy relevance of her work, and her active role in policy advice are exactly in line with the ideas that Leuphana's School of Public Affairs stands for, he said.