Research Analysts

As a senior in college, I had thought of myself as an experienced researcher. I had worked on quite a handful of projects and was prepared to immediately dive into the world of economics research on my own. I have a friend, however, who is three years older than me and had served as both an intern and RA at the New York Fed. He spoke very highly of everything he had learned throughout his years here and convinced me to apply to the RA program instead of applying straight to grad school. I ended up doing so and luckily managed to get an offer from the DSGE team.

Over the past two years I’ve learned an immense amount from the projects and policy products that I’ve worked on, as well as the seminars and classes that I was able to attend. I already feel able to walk into a room of graduate students and match their pace of economics knowledge, which I know will be a big head start when I start grad school myself.

The RA program fundamentally shaped my approach to economic research—from developing policy-relevant research questions to designing empirical strategies to test them. While my time at the New York Fed also helped strengthen my technical skills in various programing languages, what stood out most was the opportunity to contribute to the broader research process. Working closely with economists, I learned how to translate economic intuition, patterns in data, and institutional knowledge into testable empirical hypotheses.

I collaborated with one of my economists on studying the role of financial intermediaries in supporting the surge in small business formation that occurred during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic. The project involved cleaning and merging many datasets, which helped me improve my technical skills. More importantly, my economist gave me the intellectual freedom to suggest potential hypotheses and mechanisms to explore in the data. Receiving feedback on my suggestions helped me refine this part of the research process.

Lastly, the research I have contributed to at the New York Fed has been rooted in the institutional details of the financial sector. These details are particularly important for explaining many of the economic outcomes that policymakers care about. I can’t imagine a better place to gain this specific knowledge, which I’m sure will help me develop relevant research questions during graduate school and my future career.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about my time at the Bank—first as an intern, and then as an RA—is the wide variety of topics I’ve been exposed to within the field, through both research and policy work. I’ve explored areas such as U.S. dollar security holdings around the globe, bank runs, Treasury and municipal bond market liquidity, and discount window stigma. Through these projects, I’ve seen all stages of the research process, explored a wide range of datasets (including those that I’ve constructed myself), sharpened my coding skills, and become better at organizing projects for effective collaboration.

I’ve also worked on four policy briefings for President John Williams on topics relevant to financial stability, which have allowed me to work with and learn from experts in Markets and Supervision. Being a part of these discussions has given me a deeper appreciation for the value of economic research within the policymaking process and played a huge role in solidifying my decision to go to graduate school. Furthermore, my managers are great mentors, providing advice on day-to-day work and longer-term career goals while also actively encouraging work-life balance.

The research analyst role is incredibly team-oriented, driven by the range of knowledge and backgrounds that exist across the Research floor. Many of the skills I’ve developed have come through working with others—whether on shared projects or through informal interactions.

I work closely with other DSGE RAs, using the New York Fed DSGE model to produce forecasts and counterfactuals to provide insight for FOMC meetings. Most of these efforts are team-based by nature, but we often turn to one another for advice on individual projects.

During my time here, I’ve worked on four policy briefings on topics ranging from the distributional consequences of monetary policy to the role of input/output links in inflation dynamics. Each of these briefings had five or more co-authors, many of them fellow RAs—clear evidence of how collaborative our research is.

In addition, I took a PhD Macroeconomics course at NYU with another DSGE RA to supplement our technical training. We discussed class concepts in the context of our actual work, which helped make the coursework more tangible. A collaborative nature guides most of our interactions and I’m incredibly grateful for the supportive team culture within the Research Group!

Across the Bank, various programs and the economists pour a lot into our development. The tuition assistance program, for example, allowed me to take fully paid-for graduate math courses at my alma mater, Columbia, and helped me further my mathematical skills for understanding theoretical economics. There’s also an RA mentorship program, which pairs each research analyst with an economist whose sole purpose is to guide our experience here and provide support regarding next steps.

Although assignments rotate every six months, connections last. Various economists also elect to teach mini-lecture series to introduce us to, or further our understanding of, foundational and topical knowledge in their fields of economics. I’ve personally benefited from the implicit training we can receive just by casually chatting with any economist on the floor. I have mentors in six of the seven different research departments (I believe!) who have guided me to think more critically about each piece of the academic research process, from refining the econometrics underlying model, to anticipating and addressing counterfactuals to research ideas, to reviewing related literature in fields outside of my niche interests.