Jakob is a macroeconomist and holds the Xiaokai Yang Chair in Business and Economics. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and was an ARC Professorial Fellow from 2011 to 2015. His research interests are in macroeconomics, endogenous and unified economic growth, the macroecomics of inequality, history of economic growth,stock and house price valuation, macrofinance, and applied econometrics.

Jakob was born in Randers, Denmark and holds an M.Ec. from the University of Aarhus, Denmark and a Ph.D. from the Australian National University. Prior to undertaking his Ph.D. Jakob worked for some years in the financial sector in Denmark as a financial analyst and as the Deputy Chief Economist at the Bank of Jutland. Since completing his Ph.D. he has held lecturing positions at the University of Southampton, University of Western Australia and Flinders University and professorial positions at Brunel University, London, and University of Copenhagen. He returned to Australia in 2006 to take up his current position at Monash University.

Jakob has published more than 100 papers in international refereed journals including Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of Monetary Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, Economic Journal, European Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Oxford Economic Papers, Macroeconomic Dynamics, Journal of Economic History, Economica, Explorations in Economic History, Journal of International Money and Finance and Economics Letters.