Anita Mukherjee

I am an Associate Professor of Risk and Insurance at UW-Madison's Wisconsin School of Business. My research contains two focal areas: (1) household finance, retirement, and financial literacy, and (2) public policy related to drugs and crime, focusing on prison policy and the opioid overdose epidemic. My research has been published in top economics/finance journals, such as the Journal of Financial Economics and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, as well as top field journals, such as the Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Risk and Insurance, and Journal of Law and Economics. I am an Editor of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance.

I am a fellow of the TIAA Institute, a consultant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (Insurance Initiative), and a member of the G53 Financial Literacy and Personal Finance Research Network. I am also actively engaged with a number of social science units on campus, including the Center for Financial Security Retirement and Disability Research Center, the Institute for Research on Poverty, and the Center for Demography of Health and Aging. I am an affiliated faculty at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Outside of campus, I am a member of the Risk Theory Society and the Justice Tech Lab. I have previously co-edited a special issue on Financing Longevity for The Journal of the Economics of Ageing.

I earned my Ph.D. in Applied Economics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. I also hold an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering, a B.S. in Mathematics, and a B.A. in Economics, all from Stanford University. Prior to enrolling at Wharton, I spent two years working as a consultant in the financial services division at Oliver Wyman in New York. 

Link to my CV

Publications

Inequality in the Golden Years: Wealth Gradients in Disability-Free and Work-Free Longevity in the United States
Journal of Health Economics (2023)
Finalist for SCOR/EGRIE Young Economist Best Paper Award 2023
(with Hessam Bavafa and Tyler Welch) 

Set it and Forget it? Financing Retirement in an Age of Defaults
Journal of Financial Economics (2023)
Finalist for 2023 TIAA Paul A. Samuelson Award
(with Lucas Goodman and Shanthi Ramnath)


The Effects of the Opioid Crisis on Employment: Evidence from Labor Market Flows
Journal of Human Resources (2023)
(with Daniel W. Sacks and Hoyoung Yoo)


The Effects of Naloxone Access Laws on Opioid Abuse, Mortality, and Crime
Journal of Law and Economics (2022)
(with Jennifer L. Doleac)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 11489


Intergenerational Altruism and Retirement Transfers: Evidence from the Social Security Notch
Journal of Human Resources (2022, published online 2020)


Impacts of Private Prison Contracting on Inmate Time Served and Recidivism
AEJ: Economic Policy (2021) 


Medicaid and Long-Term Care: The Effects of Penalizing Strategic Asset Transfers
Journal of Risk and Insurance (2021)
(with Junhao Liu)


Targeting Weather Insurance Markets
 Journal of Risk and Insurance (2021)
(with Shawn Cole and Jeremy Tobacman)


Improving the Use of Health Products: A Sales Experiment with Chlorine Tablets
Health Economics (2021) 
(with Camille Boudot-Reddy)


The Burgeoning Health Care Needs of Aging Prisoners
AEA Papers and Proceedings (2019) 
(with Hessam Bavafa)


Building Financial and Health Literacy at Older Ages: The Role of Online Information
Journal of Consumer Affairs (2019) 
(with Hessam Bavafa and Junhao Liu)


Time and Money: Social Security Benefits and Intergenerational Transfers
AEA Papers and Proceedings (2018)  


Assessing the Demand for Micropensions among India's Poor
The Journal of the Economics of Ageing (2017)
(with Olivia S. Mitchell)

Works-in-Progress

The Causal Effect of Heat on Violence: Social Implications of Unmitigated Heat Among the Incarcerated
*Revise and Resubmit*, Journal of Human Resources
NBER Working Paper 28987, July 2021
(with Nicholas J. Sanders) 

U.S. Congress Testimony: cited in hearing on "Advancing Environmental Justice through Climate Action" by Dr. R. Jisung Park


Does Health Insurance Reduce Consumption Risk?
*draft available upon request*
(with Daniel W. Sacks and Hoyoung Yoo) 


Employee savings and employer contribution rules in defined contribution plans: Evidence from age-based policies
*draft available upon request*
(with Brent Davis and Mingli Zhong)

The Effects of Procrastination on Retirement Financing
(with Rohan Shah) 

Other Publications / Writing


Hotter Temperaments: Prisons and Violence in a Warming World
Econofact, November 2021
 (with Nicholas J. Sanders)


Future Directions for Research on Financial Literacy and Financing Longevity: Perspectives from Professor Olivia S. Mitchell
The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 2019


Perspective Piece on “Organizing Old Age Pensions for India’s Unorganized Workers: A Case Study of a Sector-Driven Approach, by Narayana Muttur Ranganathan
The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 2019


Lost and Found: Claiming Behavior in Abandoned Retirement Accounts
Center for Financial Security Working Paper, October 2020
(with Corina Mommaerts)


Frictions in Saving and Claiming: An Analysis of Unclaimed Retirement Accounts
Center for Financial Security Working Paper, October 2019
  (with Corina Mommaerts)


Financing Longevity: The Economics of Pensions, Health, and Long-Term Care - Introduction to the Special Issue     
The Journal of the Economics of Ageing
Special Issue on Financing Longevity, October 2018
(with Karen Eggleston)


Research Roundup: What Does the Evidence Say about how to Fight the Opioid Epidemic?
Brookings Institute, December 2018
(with Jennifer Doleac and Molly Schnell)


Reverse Mortgages
Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging
(section: Social Security and Pension Systems), Springer, March 2019
(with J. Michael Collins and Junhao Liu)


Individual Retirement Arrangements
Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging
(section: Social Security and Pension Systems), Springer, March 2019
(with Lois Miller)


Assessing the Need for a Comprehensive Social Security Scheme for India’s Below Poverty Line Population
Institute for Financial Management and Research Working Paper, August 2012
(with Samik Adhikari, Shardul Oza, and Shahid Vaziralli)


Teaching

I co-developed and co-teach a course on Business Analytics (GenBus 306). This course is now required of all BBA students at the Wisconsin School of Business. All course materials are available through a portal available to registered students. 

The learning objectives of the course are for students to: (1) acquire “statistical literacy,” meaning that they can interpret statistics frequently used in current events, industry reports, and so on; (2) distinguish between descriptive and inferential statistics, and apply skills such as data summarization, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis, using Excel; (3) apply the core concepts of probability to decision-making under uncertainty, including an introduction to simulation; (4) synthesize their knowledge with quantitative business cases; and; (5) effectively communicate data analyses in written, visual, and oral formats.