Hester Peirce is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Peirce's primary research interests relate to the regulation of the financial markets.

Before joining the Mercatus Center, Hester Peirce served as Senior Counsel to Senator Shelby's staff on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. In that position, she worked on financial regulatory reform efforts following the financial crisis of 2008 and oversight of the regulatory implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act. Among the issues Peirce focused on were derivatives regulation, the use of economic analysis in the development of financial regulations, the regulation of investment advisers and broker-dealers, corporate governance, and the regulation of credit rating agencies. Her oversight work on the Banking Committee focused primarily on the activities of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

Peirce served as counsel to Commissioner Paul S. Atkins at the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2004 to 2008. Prior to that, she served as a staff attorney in the Division of Investment Management at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before joining the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Peirce clerked for Judge Roger B. Andewelt on the Court of Federal Claims and was an associate at a major Washington, D.C. law firm.

Hester Peirce earned her B.A. in economics from Case Western Reserve University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. She also studied in Vienna, Austria on a Fulbright grant.