Biography
Luisa Blanco is an Affiliated Research Scholar in the St. Mary’s University, Economics Department. Her role supports the University’s National Science Foundation Diabetes research grant under the direction of Belinda Román, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Economics. Blanco is also a scholar at UCLA Resource Center for Minority Aging Research-Center for Health Improvement of Minority Elderly (RCMAR-CHIME), a Visiting Senior Scholar at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank (2017-2018), an Adjunct Researcher at RAND Corporation, and a Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College at Oxford.
Blanco’s funded research projects focus on financial behavior and financial planning for retirement among minorities in the United States. She conducted a community-based randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on retirement saving among Hispanics in the Los Angeles area. Blanco also leads the mobile money diary project, which collects data about financial behavior and health among Hispanics in California.