Jacob Harry Hollander, a well-known figure in economics, was born in Baltimore in 1871. He was the son of Mayor and Rosa Mayer Hollander. At Johns Hopkins University he received his B.A. in 1891 and his Ph.D. in 1894. In 1897 he was appointed Secretary of a special mission by President McKinley to negotiate a monetary agreement with the leading countries of Europe, and he spent a year abroad. Early in 1900 he was named special commissioner to revise the laws on taxation in Puerto Rico, and President McKinley appointed him Treasurer of Puerto Rico. He organized the Treasury Department of the island and devised and introduced the revenue system known as the "Hollander Law." In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt sent Hollander to Santo Domingo to investigate the public debt there. He was financial advisor to the Dominican Republic from 1908 to 1910. In 1915 he attended the First Pan-American Financial Conference and was named chairman of the Permanent Group Committee on the Dominican Republic. He served until 1919.

Hollander was umpire in the Maryland and Upper Potomac coal fields during the labor disputes in 1918-1920, and was a member of the board of referees of the Cleveland garment industry from 1921 to 1932. As a result of a strike by clothing workers in Baltimore in 1932, Hollander investigated conditions in the industry locally. He was chairman of the Maryland Tax Survey Commission in 1931 and 1932, and in 1934 served on the Maryland Old Age Pension Commission.

Beginning in 1901, Hollander was a member of the Johns Hopkins University serving successively as instructor, associate professor, and full professor of Political Economy. In 1925 he was named Abram G. Hutzler Professor of Political Economy. He was the author of many books and articles on economics. Hollander's wide-ranging research and writings covered the fields of public finance, money and banking, labor relations, and economic history and theory. Among his best known works were his contributions in the history of English economic thought especially on the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

Hollander served as president of the American Economic Association in 1921. In 1938 he was awarded an honorary L.L.D. from the University of Glasgow on the 200th anniversary of Adam Smith's matriculation.

Hollander married Theresa G. Hutzler in 1906 and she died in 1916. They had two daughters and a son, Rosamond, Bertha and David. Jacob Harry Hollander died on July 9, 1940.