Felicia Ionescu is a Principal Economist in the Research Department at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. She joined the Federal Reserve Bank in July 2013, prior to which she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Colgate University. 

Ionescu is a macroeconomist working on human capital investment and household finance. In previous work, she has analyzed the interactions between education opportunities, college financing, and repayment incentives under the Federal Student Loan Program. She has also studied the risk of investment in college and the provision of insurance against such risk. Her current research i) examines the interplay between federal student loans and other types of credit, such as private student loans and credit cards, and ii) compares the effect of college and stocks---two high return, high risk investments---on the well-being of different types of individuals.

Ionescu received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Transilvania, Romania and an M.A. in Economics, an M.S. in Mathematics, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Iowa.