John Karl Scholz

John Karl Scholz is the Dean of the College of Letters & Science at UW-Madison. Prior to this, he was the Nellie June Gray Professor of Economic Policy in the department of economics, which he joined in 1988.

In 1997-98 he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department, and from 1990-91 he was a senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisors. He directed the Institute for Research on Poverty at UW–Madison from 2000-2004.

Professor Scholz writes on diverse topics including household saving, the earned income tax credit and low-wage labor markets, financial barriers to higher education, and bankruptcy laws. His research has appeared in leading economics journals, including The American Economic Review, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy,and the Review of Economic Studies.

In 2007 Scholz and his colleagues Ananth Seshadri and Surachai Khitatrakun were awarded the twelfth annual TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security for their paper "Are Americans Saving 'Optimally' for Retirement." He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

His undergraduate degree is from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota and his Ph.D. is from Stanford University.