Juanna Schrøter Joensen is a Research Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of individual human capital investments, which are key to understanding income and wealth inequality. In her research, she quantifies how incentives and circumstances interact with endowments and information in shaping human capital. She highlights important aspects of heterogeneity in human capital and its interaction with institutions and public policies; such as financial aid, choice sets, curricula, and grading. She shows how financial and non-financial incentives can have very different impacts on individual behavior and success; depending on socioeconomic environment, skills, and gender.

She has received several awards for her research. Her PhD dissertation was prized the best in Social Sciences in 2007 and the best in Economics in the two-year period 2006-2007 at Aarhus University. She also received the European Association of Labour Economists (EALE) Young Labour Economist Prize in 2009.

Joensen received a B.Sc., M.Sc. in Mathematics and Economics from Aarhus University in 2002 and 2005, respectively, and a Ph.D. in Economics also from Aarhus University in November 2007.