Cormac O’Dea Receives Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Research
Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) recognized O’Dea for outstanding research in public economics and household finance.
Cormac O’Dea, Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale University, has received the 2025–2026 Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication or Research.
The prize recognizes outstanding research by faculty members in the social and natural sciences. O’Dea was honored for his work in public economics and household finance.
In the prize citation, FAS Dean Steven Wilkinson noted that “Cormac’s research uses administrative records, novel datasets, and economic modeling to study how retirement systems, household saving and labor-supply decisions, and intergenerational persistence in earnings shape economic outcomes over the lifecycle.”
O’Dea is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His broader research interests include household saving, retirement, and intergenerational links in economic outcomes.
The Greer Prize follows several recent honors for O’Dea’s research and teaching. In 2025, he and coauthors Taha Choukhmane of MIT and Lucas Goodman of the U.S. Treasury Department received the TIAA Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security for their American Economic Review study, “Efficiency in Household Decision-Making: Evidence from the Retirement Savings of US Couples.”
O’Dea also recently received the Lex Hixon ’63 Prize, Yale College’s highest honor for teaching excellence in the social sciences.
The award adds to a growing list of honors recognizing O’Dea’s scholarship, teaching, and contributions to Yale Economics.