(Antoinette Schoar)
Stewart C. Myers-Horn Family Professor of Finance
MIT Sloan School of Management
Antoinette Schoar aims to give consumers and regulators a clearer understanding of finance to help them make better decisions.
“Finance is a fantastic tool for helping people improve their lives,” she says. “Unfortunately, it can become a hindrance, and it shouldn’t.”
Schoar’s current research projects include investigating the impact of new technologies on consumer finance, how credit card companies are using ever-expanding big data to tailor consumer targeting, how consumers manage their retirement savings, and new payment systems such as cryptocurrencies.
“We’re working to help redesign financial products such as credit cards so they serve people when they need it rather than getting people into trouble when they don’t even notice they’re getting into trouble,” she says.
Schoar cochairs the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Corporate Finance Program and is a cofounder of ideas42, a nonprofit that uses insights from behavioral economics and psychology to solve social problems.
In 2019, she was named the Stewart C. Myers-Horn Family Professor of Finance at MIT Sloan. “I am very honored and proud to hold that professorship,” she said. “Having the resources that help me do the work I’m doing is extremely helpful.
“MIT has given academia a template for doing good in the world while at the same time doing fundamental science,” Schoar said. “Since its inception, MIT has been a model for both.”
Meet more MIT professorship recipients.
—Mark Sullivan
This article was originally published in August 2021.
