On Sabbatical leave 2026-2027.
Jonathan A. Parker is the Robert C. Merton (1970) Professor of Financial Economics and codirector of the MIT Sloan Consumer Finance Initiative. He is also an economic adviser for the Congressional Budget Office, a coeditor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Parker has been both Area Head of Economics, Finance, and Accounting at Sloan and Head of the Finance Group, and is a CoDirector Emeritus at the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy. Parker has served as a visiting scholar at several Federal Reserve Banks, as special adviser on Financial Stability for the Office of Financial Stability in the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2009, as contractor for Fidelity, as a contractor for the JPMorgan Chase Institute, as an editor of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual, on the Board of Editors of the American Economic Review, and as Head of the Finance Group at MIT Sloan.
An expert in finance, macroeconomics, and household behavior, Parker has published widely on topics such as macroeconomic risks and asset returns, household financial decisions, fiscal stabilization policy, national saving, the measurement of business cycles, and modeling human economic behavior.
Recent News
- In March 2026, interview at the Swedish House of Finance about “Simple Allocation Rules and Optimal Portfolio Choice Over the Lifecycle," with V. Duarte, J. Fonseca, and A. Goodman
- Publication: "Revenue Collapses and the Consumption of Small Business Owners in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic," with O. Kim and A. Schoar, Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 170. August 2025.
- Publication: “Household Portfolios and Retirement Saving over the Life Cycle,” with A. Schoar and A. Cole, Journal of Finance, Volume 80, Issue 5, August 2025, pp. 2739-2787.
- In January 2025, awarded the 2024 TIAA Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security.
- Publication: "Target Date Funds as Asset Market Stabilizers: Evidence from the Pandemic," with Y. Sun, Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Volume 24, Issue 1, January 2025, pp. 183 - 208.
- Publication: "Silicon Valley Bank and the Changing Structure of Banking," TechREG Chronicle, Competition Policy International, August 2023.
- Recent Media Coverage
Jonathan Parker on BlueSky Social
Affiliations
MIT Sloan Consumer Finance Initiative
Jonathan Parker is Co-Director of Sloan's Consumer Finance Initiative.
MIT Sloan Finance Group
World-renowned for its groundbreaking research, where students are exposed to the very latest in finance theory and practice.
Golub Center for Finance & Policy
Jonathan Parker is Co-Director and Head of Consumer Financial Policy Initiatives at the MIT Golub Center.
The MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering
Jonathan Parker is an affiliated researcher with the MIT LFE.
Congressional Budget Office
Jonathan Parker is an Economic Advisor for the Congressional Budget Office.
The National Bureau of Economic Research
Jonathan Parker is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.