About

David Laibson is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics and a Faculty Dean of Lowell House at Harvard University. His research focuses on behavioral economics, with emphasis on intertemporal choice, self-regulation, behavior change, household finance, public finance, macroeconomics, asset pricing, aging, and biosocial science. Laibson is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a Research Associate in the Aging, Asset Pricing, and Economic Fluctuations Working Groups. He serves on Harvard’s Pension Investment Committee and on the Board of the Russell Sage Foundation, where he chairs the finance committee. Additionally, Laibson serves on the advisory boards of the Social Science Genetics Association Consortium and the Consumer Finance Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. He has served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at Harvard University and as a member of the Academic Research Council of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Laibson is a recipient of a Marshall Scholarship and is an elected member of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the National Academy of Sciences. He holds degrees from Harvard University (AB Economics, summa cum laude), the London School of Economics (MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD in Economics). He received his PhD in 1994 and has taught at Harvard since then. In recognition of his teaching, he has been awarded Harvard’s ΦΒΚ Prize and a Harvard College Professorship.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Economics
• Medicine
• Social psychology
• Biology
• Econometrics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Business
• Information Retrieval
• Genetics
• Family medicine
• Nursing
• Communication
• Evolutionary biology
• Physical medicine and rehabilitation
• Data science
• Internet privacy
• Demography
• Monetary economics
• Finance
• Medical emergency
• World Wide Web

Selected publications

• Optimal illiquidity

  Journal of Financial Economics · 2025-01-18 · 4 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A simple framework for MPCs and MPXs

  London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) · 2025-12-19

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• An Updated Polygenic Index Repository: Expanded Phenotypes, New Cohorts, and Improved Causal Inference

  Research Square · 2025-10-13

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An Updated Polygenic Index Repository: Expanded Phenotypes, New Cohorts, and Improved Causal Inference

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-05-18 · 4 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Polygenic indexes (PGIs) - DNA-based predictors of individual phenotypes - have become essential tools across biomedical and social sciences. We introduce Version 2 of the Polygenic Index Repository, which expands phenotype coverage from 47 to 61, increases the number of participating datasets from 11 to 20, and adopts a more consistent and improved methodology for PGI construction. For 16 phenotypes, we leverage summary statistics from an updated GWAS meta-analysis with greater statistical power compared to the original release, thereby improving the PGI's predictive power. To improve power for family-based analyses, we provide imputed parental PGIs in all datasets with first-degree relatives and offer a framework for interpreting results from analyses that control for parental PGIs. We illustrate the utility of parental PGIs using two applications: (1) comparing PGI associations with and without parental PGI controls for all phenotypes in two Repository datasets with family data, and (2) for BMI and diastolic blood pressure, exploring the contribution of causal versus non-causal components of PGI associations to the imperfect portability of PGIs across subgroups within a genetic ancestry. Collectively, the updates enhance predictive performance, broaden the Repository's scope, and introduce novel resources that reduce confounding bias and improve interpretability.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Redefine statistical significance

  Artefactual Field Experiments · 2025-01-10 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Employer-based short-term savings accounts

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2025-05-23

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• The Semblance of Success in Nudging Consumers to Pay Down Credit Card Debt

  American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 2025-10-29 · 1 citations

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  We test a nudge in a field experiment on credit cards. The nudge shrouds the autopay enrollment option for cardholders to automatically pay exactly the credit card minimum payment each month. After six months, the nudge decreases the fraction of cardholders who only pay exactly the minimum by 23 percent. However, the nudge does not significantly reduce credit card debt. Nudged cardholders often choose autopay amounts that are only slightly higher than the minimum payment. The nudge reduces autopay enrollment, which increases missed payments. The nudge reduces manual payments by autopay enrollees. Cardholders frequently lacking liquid cash best explains our results. (JEL C93, D12, D91, G21, G51)

  PublisherDOI

• Does Pension Automatic Enrollment Increase Debt? Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Experiment

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-02-01 · 15 citations

  reportOpen access

  Does automatic enrollment into retirement saving increase household debt?We study the randomized roll-out of automatic enrollment pensions to ~160,000 employers in the United Kingdom with 2-29 employees.We find that the additional savings generated through automatic enrollment are partially offset by increases in unsecured debt.Over the first 41 months after enrollment, each additional month increases the average automatically enrolled employee's pension savings by £32-£38, unsecured debt (such as personal loans and bank overdrafts) by £7, the likelihood of having a mortgage by 0.05 percentage points, and mortgage balances by £118.Automatic enrollment causes loan defaults to fall and credit scores to rise modestly.

  PublisherDOI

• Employer-Based Short-Term Savings Accounts

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-01-01 · 4 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We study the introduction of a choice architecture design intended to increase short-term savings among employees at five U.K. firms. Employees were offered the opportunity to opt into a payroll deduction program that auto-deposits funds from each paycheck into a short-term savings account from which withdrawals are possible at any time. We find that employees who opted into the program kept using it. Among employees whose accounts were created early enough to be observed over the first 12 months after their account activation and who did not separate from employment during this period, 96% still had a balance greater than £1 and 87% received an automatic payroll contribution in month 12. However, product take-up was very low: no more than 0.7% of eligible employees ever activated an account. Opt-in access to short-term savings programs does not elicit widespread participation.

  PublisherDOI

• Present Bias Amplifies the Household Balance-Sheet Channels of Macroeconomic Policy

  The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2024-09-09 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract We study the effect of monetary and fiscal policy in a heterogeneous-agent model where households have present-biased time preferences and naive beliefs. The model features a liquid asset and illiquid home equity, which households can use as collateral for borrowing. Because present bias substantially increases households’ marginal propensity to consume (MPC), present bias increases the effect of fiscal policy. Present bias also amplifies the effect of monetary policy, but at the same time, slows down the speed of monetary transmission. Interest rate cuts incentivize households to conduct cash-out refinances, which become targeted liquidity injections to high-MPC households. Present bias also introduces a motive for households to procrastinate refinancing their mortgages, which slows down the speed with which this monetary channel operates.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01AG016605

  NIH · $380k · 2002

• Core C - Measurement and Methods in ADRD and Racial Disparities Research

  NIH · $78.7M · 1997–2029

• Behavioral Intervention Development Core

  NIH · $17.2M · 2009–2029

• Research on Bounded Rationality

  NSF · $410k · 2001–2005

• DRU -- Collaborative Research: An Econophysics and Behavioral Approach to Financial Fluctuations

  NSF · $131k · 2005–2009

Frequent coauthors

• James J. Choi

  306 shared

• Brigitte C. Madrian

  Brigham Young University

  293 shared

• Xavier Gabaix

  212 shared

• Daniel J. Benjamin

  University of California, Los Angeles

  212 shared

• John Beshears

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  201 shared

• David Cesarini

  172 shared

• Peter M. Visscher

  University of Cambridge

  139 shared

• Patrick Turley

  University of Southern California

  128 shared

Education

• B.A., Economics

  Harvard University

  1993

• M.A., Economics

  Harvard University

  1994

• Ph.D., Economics

  Harvard University

  1998

Awards & honors

• Marshall Scholarship
• Fellow of the Econometric Society
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly…