Arna Olafsson
Senior Fellow 2025–2026

Arna Olafsson is an associate professor of finance at the Department of Finance, Copenhagen Business School (DK). Her research focuses on household finance, financial intermediation, behavioral finance, sustainable finance, and the intersection of labor and finance. She currently holds an ERC Starting Grant for her project Gender in Finance and serves as a member of the Icelandic Fiscal Policy Council, which evaluates the government’s fiscal strategy.

A central aim of Arna’s research is to understand the traits and circumstances that shape individuals’ and households’ financial decisions—and how they use financial tools, markets, technology, and information to reach their goals. Much of her work is conducted in collaboration with financial institutions, combining large-scale banking data with insights from natural and field experiments designed and run in partnership with these organizations.

Arna earned her PhD from the Stockholm School of Economics (SE) in 2014, during which she was also a visiting student at UC Berkeley (US). After completing her PhD, she joined the Copenhagen Business School as a tenure-track assistant professor.