Faculty
Taha Choukhmane is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
He was most recently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research interests lie at the intersection of household finance and behavioral economics, with a focus on households’ saving decisions.
Taha received his PhD in economics at Yale University, where he was awarded the George Trimis Dissertation Prize. He is the recipient of a grant from the Social Security Administration, and he was a dissertation fellow of the Boston College Center for Retirement Research and a graduate policy fellow at Yale’s Institute of Social and Policy Studies.
Current Research Focus: Choukhmane’s research focuses on the way households make their saving and investment decisions. His current research projects examine the behavior of participants in retirement savings plans: the behavioral biases that affect their investment and portfolio-allocation decisions, and the extent to which married couples coordinate their saving decisions. Another area of ongoing research explores how the design of retirement saving incentives contributes to racial wealth inequality.
Choukhmane, Taha. Forthcoming.
Choukhmane, Taha, and Tim de Silva. Journal of Finance. Forthcoming.
Choukhmane, Taha, Jorge Colmenares, Cormac O'Dea, Jonathan Rothbaum, and Lawrence D.W. Schmidt, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6592-21. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, October 2025.
Choukhmane, Taha and Christopher J. Palmer, Working Paper. September 2025.
Banerjee, Sudipto, Louisa Schafer, Taha Choukehmane, and Tim de Silva. T. Rowe Price, July 2025.
Choukhmane, Taha, Lucas Goodman, and Cormac O'Dea. American Economic Review Vol. 115, No. 5 (2025): 1485-1519.
When employers hold back wages for retirement savings, younger consumers and less-wealthy people cut their spending. Wealthier individuals tap their deposit accounts.
White employees receive nearly twice as much in employer and tax subsidies for retirement saving than Black and Hispanic workers.
Research by assistant professor Taha Choukhmane and co-authors found that many couples fail to direct their 401(k) contributions toward the spouse with the better employer match. "By not focusing on the highest match, couples may sacrifice an average of $14,000 in retirement wealth over their lifetime, which may climb to as high as $40,000 in additional wealth at retirement for 10% of couples," said Choukhmane.
By switching retirement contributions to the account with the higher match rate, 1 in 5 couples could increase their savings by an estimated $750 per year according to research by assistant professor Taha Choukhmane and co-authors. Choukmane said the research aims to gauge whether couples coordinate their finances as a household or instead manage their money individually. "The absence of coordination can be a choice, but it's a costly choice," he said.
In this podcast interview, assistant professor Taha Choukhmane said: "We've had some early evidence that nudging people gets them to put more money in their retirement account. But whether that's translating to actual additional savings is going to depend on how people finance those increases."
"The goal has to be retirement preparedness that also is financial resilience, having the money to pay for your car if it breaks down."
