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Congratulations to James Poterba for his selection as 2021 AFA Fellow.  Dr. Poterba is the Mitsui Professor of Economics at MIT and the President of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has served as President of the Eastern Economic Association and the National Tax Association, as vice president of the American Economic Association, and as a director of the AFA.

Dr. Poterba’s research focuses on how taxation affects the economic decisions of households and firms, particularly those involving saving and portfolio behavior. His recent research has analyzed the determinants of retirement saving, the draw-down of assets after households reach retirement, and the role of tax-deferred retirement saving programs such as 401(k) plans in contributing to retirement security.

Dr. Poterba is a trustee of the College Retirement Equity Fund (CREF), the TIAA-CREF mutual funds, and of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He is a former editor of the Journal of Public Economics, a co-author of The Role of Annuity Markets in Financing Retirement (2001), and an editor or coeditor of Global Warming: Economic Policy Responses (1991), International Comparisons of Household Saving (1994), Empirical Foundations of Household Taxation (1996), Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance (1999), Fiscal Reform in Colombia (2005), and Economic Analysis of Infrastructure Investment (forthcoming). Dr. Poterba served as a member of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in 2005. Dr. Poterba holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard College and a D. Phil. in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, a Batterymarch Fellow, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 2014 he received the Daniel M. Holland Medal from the National Tax Association for the study and practice of public finance.

Matteo Maggiori has been selected by the AFA to receive the 2021 Fischer Black Prize for an outstanding financial economist under age 40.  He is Associate Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he has taught since 2019. Before joining Stanford, Matteo taught at Harvard University and New York University. His research topics have included the analysis of exchange rate dynamics, global capital flows, the international financial system, the role of the dollar as a reserve currency, tax havens, bubbles, expectations and portfolio investment, and very long-run discount rates. He is Research Associate at the NBER in the Asset Pricing, Economics Fluctuation and Growth, International Finance, and Macroeconomics Programs. He is also Research Fellow at the CEPR. He currently serves as Associate Editor at the Journal of the European Economic Association and Associate Editor at the Journal of International Economics. He received his Ph.D. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012.

According to current AFA policies, the Fischer Black Prize Selection Committee presents a ranked list of three highly qualified finalists to the AFA Board at a special meeting. After discussion, the Selection Committee and the Board vote for the top candidate. The members of this year’s Selection Committee were David Hirshleifer, Chair, Ralph Koijen, Amit Seru, Laura Starks, and Dimitri Vayanos.

The members of the Board and Committee who were present at the meeting to select the winner and who were eligible to vote (and had no conflict of interest) are: Pierre Collin-Dufresne, Andrea Eisfeldt, John Graham, David Hirshleifer, Ralph Koijen, Stefan Nagel, Anna Pavlova, Gordon Phillips, Manju Puri, James Schallheim, Laura Starks, Dimitri Vayanos, and Ingrid Werner.