Jessica Hennessey is the John D. Hollingsworth Professor of Economics and Chair of the Department of Economics at Furman University, in Greenville, South Carolina. She joined the Furman faculty in 2009, served as interim department chair in 2024–25, and began a full term as department chair in 2025–26.
Her research spans public economics, economic history, and institutional economics, with a particular focus on fiscal federalism (how fiscal responsibilities are allocated across levels of government). Her work examines the changing relationship between state and local governments in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tracing how constitutional and legislative change reshaped the landscape of local finance and autonomy. She has published in the Eastern Economic Journal, Constitutional Political Economy, Journal of Economic Education, and the Journal of Wealth Management, and has contributed chapters to volumes from Harvard University Press and Springer.
In the classroom, Dr. Hennessey teaches Introduction to Economics, Empirical Methods in Economics, Public Economics, Economics of Gender, Economics of Market Regulation, and a senior seminar in American Economic History. She has also taught Scottish Urban Economic History through Furman’s Edinburgh study away program. In recent years she has been actively engaged with the role of artificial intelligence in economics education, presenting at the 2025 Teaching & Learning with AI Conference (University of Central Florida, Orlando) and participating in the Teaching Economics with AI workshop at the 2026 ASSA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.
Committed to mentorship and student development, Dr. Hennessey is a certified Gallup Strengths Coach and has taught three sections of Furman’s award-winning Pathways Program. This dedication has been recognized through two university awards: the Alester G. Furman, Jr. and Janie Earle Furman Award for Meritorious Advising (2012) and the Award for Meritorious Teaching (2021).
She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland and her B.A. in Economics (magna cum laude) from Carleton College, where she also studied at King’s College Cambridge. Before entering academia, she worked as a research economist at Lexecon, an economic consulting firm, in Boston and Chicago.