Jessica Wachter is a leading finance expert whose expertise spans empirical and theoretical asset pricing, investment decisions and asset allocation, financial derivatives, and disaster risk. Professor Wachter’s empirical and theoretical approaches provide a rigorous framework for evaluating market behavior and investor decision-making during periods of stress and financial instability.
Strategic leadership experience at the SEC
From 2021 to 2025, Professor Wachter served as Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA) at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). She led a multidisciplinary team of nearly 200 professionals responsible for economic analysis in support of SEC rulemaking, enforcement actions, and market oversight.
During Professor Wachter’s tenure, DERA contributed to over 100 rule proposals and adoptions, including regulations related to money market fund resilience, the securities settlement cycle, and central clearing in the Treasury market.
While at DERA, Professor Wachter provided expert testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on the SEC’s oversight of trading and markets. Her service as a principal advisor to the U.S. government, expertise in quantifying the economic impact of federal rule proposals, and research on asset pricing position her well to evaluate matters involving investments, financial derivatives, risk management, and regulatory investigations, among others.
Research expertise in asset pricing and investment decision-making
In her academic research, Professor Wachter addresses key financial economics issues, including modeling macroeconomic risks and assessing their impact on equity and bond markets. She has developed influential theories on “rare disasters”—unlikely but catastrophic events—to explain stock market fluctuations.
Professor Wachter’s work also connects finance and cognitive science, analyzing how past experiences and human memory can shape investment decisions and asset allocation. She has studied the relationship between labor market volatility and financial risk, as well as the pricing of options and long-lived securities.
Award-winning scholarship
A respected author and editor, Professor Wachter’s work has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. She has earned multiple accolades, notably the Sharpe Award for best paper in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and the Marshall Blume Prize for Financial Research. Professor Wachter serves as editor for the Review of Financial Studies and has held editorial positions at Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Economic Theory.
Professor Wachter is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and formerly served as director of both the Western Finance Association and the American Finance Association.
At the Wharton School, Professor Wachter has taught courses on asset pricing, trading securities, corporate finance, and capital markets. She previously served on the faculty of the Stern School of Business at New York University.