is the Dr. Bruce I. Jacobs Professor in Quantitative Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on asset pricing, particularly models incorporating rare events and investor memory, with recent applications to modelling the impact of AI on economic growth. Her work has been published in leading academic journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
From May 2021 to January 2025, she served as Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA) at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In that role, she led a 190-person division responsible for economic analysis in support of Commission rulemaking, enforcement, and market oversight. During her tenure, DERA contributed to over 100 rule proposals and adoptions, including initiatives aimed at improving the resiliency and transparency of U.S. financial markets.
Currently, she is Editor of the Review of Financial Studies. She has served on the boards of the American Finance Association and the Western Finance Association, and as Associate Editor at journals including the Journal of Economic Theory, the Review of Financial Studies, and Quantitative Economics.
Jessica holds an A.B. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Business Economics, both from Harvard University.