Lawrence D. W. Schmidt is the Victor J. Menezes (1972) Career Development Assistant Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is an an applied economist working at the intersection of finance and macro-labor.

Schmidt’s research has developed new insights about the risk exposures and decision-making processes of households, institutional investors, and financial intermediaries, and in doing so has deepened our understanding of asset prices, financial policy, and the workings of the real economy. His research to date involves two interrelated strands. The first and most active strand studies fundamental risk factors impacting the value of human capital and the causes and consequences of imperfect risk-sharing in labor and financial markets. Particularly relevant for the Initiative is his work developing measures of workers’ exposure to changing technologies and studying implications of technological change for redistribution of labor income across workers.  The second strand aims to understand the underlying drivers of financial markets by focusing on the interplay between individual decision-making, strategic complementarities, and information processing frictions.

Schmidt holds a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and PhD and MA degrees in Economics from the University of California, San Diego. Prior to joining the faculty at MIT Sloan, Schmidt was an Assistant Professor in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago.