Each year the Bank’s Research and Statistics Group seeks roughly twenty exceptional college graduates with a strong background in economics, mathematics, and statistics to enter its Research Analyst (RA) program. RAs generally stay in the position for two years.
Emily Eisner, Money and
Payments Studies
Ellen Fu, Microeconomic Studies
Ulysses Velasquez, Financial Intermediation
About the Position
- Talented individuals with a background in economics, statistics, or a related field make the best RAs.
- Experience with large databases and statistical packages—such as SAS, STATA, and MATLAB, R Basic, Julia—is valuable.
- We’re also looking for candidates with solid analytical and decision-making abilities and good communication skills.
- Assisting economists in the analysis of current public policy issues and events
RAs help economists conduct current analysis and other short-term research on monetary policy, bank regulation, payments systems, financial markets, and the state of the U.S. and global economies.
- Assisting economists in long-term, academically oriented research projects
RAs help economists plan and execute long-term research on a wide range of applied and theoretical topics. Many RAs have the opportunity to coauthor scholarly articles.
- Performing econometric, computational, and analytical research intended for inclusion in Bank publications as well as academic journals
- Programming in statistical packages, such as SAS, Stata, MATLAB, R, and Julia
- Running financial, banking, macroeconomic, and international forecasting models
- Developing spreadsheet/web macros and programs to facilitate and improve data manipulation and analysis
- Preparing background materials for and assisting in the formulation of reports or presentations to the Bank’s president and senior management
- Attending presentations given by New York Fed economists and visiting scholars
LAUNCHING A CAREER PATH
Most RAs leaving the New York Fed enter graduate or professional degree programs. Many pursue a Ph.D. in economics or finance, but others have gone on to top business schools, law schools, and public policy or other advanced degree programs. In recent years, RAs have moved on to top Ph.D. programs in economics at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. New York Fed RAs have a strong track record of obtaining fellowships, including eighteen from the National Science Foundation in 2015-19.
Fortune 500 companies and other top employers are seeking the skills and expertise you will gain as an RA. Former RAs have accepted positions at the Bank, while others have become leaders in the business, banking, higher-education, research, and nonprofit sectors.
For more details on the career choices of recent RAs, please refer to
the RA Program Brochure.
FAQs
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is located at 33 Liberty Street, between Nassau and William Streets, in downtown Manhattan.
Directions
E-mail us
The Group has seven areas—Capital Markets, Financial Intermediation, International Research, Macroeconomic and Monetary Studies, Microeconomic Studies, Money and Payments Studies, and Regional Analysis—each with a distinctive focus and a broad research agenda. Your experience will be largely influenced by the research of the economists you’re working with and the topics they’re exploring.
More about Research and Statistics
Experience with computers and computing programs is desirable, but a strong background in programming is not required. Many incoming RAs take advantage of in-house training courses offered in the fall.
Incoming RAs can enjoy flexible work schedules; an employer-matching 401(k) savings plan; commutation assistance; health, dental, and vision insurance; and tuition reimbursement for many individual courses, certificate programs, and graduate programs.
More about Benefits
Research Analysts receive generous tuition reimbursement for coursework and degree programs at nearby universities. In addition, the New York Fed’s strong emphasis on work/life balance helps ensure that RAs have the time they need to pursue coursework in economics, mathematics, statistics, finance, or related fields.
The Tuition Assistance Program has enabled RAs to:
- Earn a master’s degree in statistics (Columbia University) while working at the Bank
- Participate in other degree and certificate programs (New York University and Columbia University)
- Take individual graduate-level classes such as stochastic calculus, probability, statistics, real analysis, linear regression models, time series regression, linear algebra, continuous-time finance, derivative securities, graph theory, and partial differential equations.
Most RAs stay for about two years. They find that’s sufficient time to learn the economic, modeling, computational, and research skills associated with the job.
Bank policy specifies that candidates must be eligible to work in the United States on a continuous basis for other than practical training purposes. In some cases, positions require access to confidential supervisory information or Federal Open Market Committee data, which is limited to “protected individuals” as defined in U.S. federal immigration law. Protected individuals include, but are not limited to, U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, U.S. permanent residents who are not yet eligible to apply for naturalization, and U.S. permanent residents who have applied for naturalization within six months of being eligible to do so.
The New York Fed’s Undergraduate Summer Analyst Program is open to students who will have completed their sophomore year of college by the start of the internship. The program emphasizes advanced assignments—with opportunities for summer analysts to enhance their business skills through critical financial analysis, formal presentations, research and writing, and professional development activities—making it ideal for students, especially rising seniors, interested in applying for the Research Analyst position in the future.
More about the Undergraduate Summer Analyst Program
Meet a Research Analyst
“As a member of the Research Group’s Time Series Analysis team, I’ve applied advanced econometric methods to a wide variety of problems in macroeconomics and finance: ‘nowcasting’ GDP growth, investigating the link between financial conditions and risks in the real economy, and predicting ‘flights to liquidity’ in corporate bond markets, among other challenges.
As well as strengthening my understanding of specific technical tools, these projects taught me how to carry out research from start to finish and greatly clarified my interests in this field. However, the best part of the job by far has been joining the network of current and former RAs. I’ve made lifelong friends in my cohort, and during the graduate school admissions process I met former RAs who are currently students or faculty members at nearly every university I visited. I could not imagine a better program to prepare aspiring researchers for their careers.”
“Beyond expanding my coding abilities, the RA program has helped me develop the intuition and econometric skills necessary to conduct sophisticated data analysis: not just knowing how to use various methods, but knowing when each one should be applied.
One project I worked on concerned optimal monetary policy in stochastic Neo-Keynesian models—despite coming in with a limited math background and not knowing what a stochastic Neo-Keynesian model was. With the help of my economist, I was able to learn cutting-edge topics in stochastic calculus and control theory, then derive important results with applications to current policy.
The Fed offers a superb environment for intellectual growth. Weekly lunchtime seminars (with pizza), Bank-sponsored training, and informal interactions (and sports leagues!) with colleagues from around the Bank make for a fun and enriching experience.”
“Working across the Research Group’s International and Macroeconomics functions, I’ve contributed to a range of projects, from estimating a demographically adjusted real wage growth rate to augmenting our forecasting models for GDP and international trade. Seeing how these models inform policy has been incredibly rewarding. Being involved in every stage of the research process has strengthened my programming and critical thinking skills.
Through the Fed’s tuition reimbursement program, I was able to take a time-series econometrics course at Columbia to improve my data analysis skills. Frequent seminars given by Fed economists and visiting professors have exposed me to topics at the forefront of economic and financial research. My fellow RAs have also been a particularly valuable source of information—whether about complicated economic concepts or the graduate school admissions process.”
“As an undergraduate, I mostly worked with small, curated data sets. It wasn’t until I came to the Fed—first as an intern, then as a full-time Research Analyst—that I experienced the challenge of working with much larger and messier data sets, mainly through research involving the Consumer Credit Panel (CCP). The CCP contains a random sample of millions of individual, anonymized credit reports, and I’ve used it in projects ranging from the impact of the Medicaid expansion on financial health to the increasing urbanization of Americans. Besides giving me an opportunity to enhance my programming skills, which are becoming increasingly important in the economics profession, working with economists on the CCP also gave me an inside look at how professional researchers deal with the imperfections of modern data.”
“Over the past year, I’ve worked on several research projects that study features of the banking industry, assessing their implications for consumers’ access to credit and the health of the financial industry as a whole. I attribute much of my ability to handle such projects to my time in the Bank’s summer research analyst program, which was a huge stepping stone for me into the world of economic research and analysis. The program not only improved my knowledge of computing environments, programming, and economic reasoning; it also introduced me to people who investigate the most urgent and important questions facing economists today. The camaraderie we had as interns then, and today as research analysts, is something from which I have benefitted enormously, both at work and in my personal life.”
Co-Authored Publications
Note: Research analysts' names are in bold.
Marco Del Negro, Domenico Giannone, Marc P. Giannoni, Andrea Tambalotti, Brandyn Bok, and Eric Qian. 2019. “Global Trends in Interest Rates.” Liberty Street Economics, February 27.
Patrick Adams, Domenico Giannone, Eric Qian, and Argia Sbordone. 2019. “Monitoring Economic Conditions during a Government Shutdown.” Liberty Street Economics, February 5.
Jason Bram and Lauren Thomas. 2018. “Beginning to Gauge Maria’s Effect on Puerto Rico’s Economy.” Liberty Street Economics, January 12.
Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise, and Noah Kwicklis. 2019. “The Impact of Import Tariffs on U.S. Domestic Prices.” Liberty Street Economics, January 4.
Michael Fosco and Thomas Klitgaard. 2018. “Recycling Oil Revenue.” Liberty Street Economics, May 14.
Thomas Klitgaard and Linda Wang. 2018. “Is the United States Relying on Foreign Investors to Fund Its Larger Budget Deficit?” Liberty Street Economics, November 28.
Rajashri Chakrabarti, Michelle Jiang, and William Nober. 2019. “Did the Value of a College Degree Decline during the Great Recession?” Liberty Street Economics, July 10.
Olivier Armantier, Michael Neubauer, Daphne Skandalis, and Wilbert van der Klaauw. 2019. “Economic Expectations Grow Less Polarized since the 2016 Election.” Liberty Street Economics, May 13.
Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joelle W. Scally, Lauren Thomas, and Wilbert van der Klaauw. 2019. “Trends in Household Debt and Credit.” Staff Reports, no. 882. April.
Fernando Duarte, Collin Jones, and Francisco Ruela. 2019. “Assessing Contagion Risk in a Financial Network.” Liberty Street Economics, June 24.
Anna Kovner and Brandon Zborowski. 2019. “Is There Too Much Business Debt?” Liberty Street Economics, May 29.
Dong Beom Choi, Michael R. Holcomb, and Donald Morgan. 2018. “Bank Leverage Limits and Regulatory Arbitrage: New Evidence on a Recurring Question.” Staff Reports, no. 856. November.
Patrick Adams, Domenico Giannone, Eric Qian, and Argia Sbordone. 2019. “Historical Reconstruction of the New York Fed Staff Nowcast, 2002-15.” Liberty Street Economics, July 12.
Patrick Adams, Brandyn Bok, Daniele Caratelli, Domenico Giannone, Eric Qian, Argia Sbordone, Camilla Schneier, and Andrea Tambalotti. 2018. “Opening the Toolbox: The Nowcasting Code on GitHub.” Liberty Street Economics, August 10.
Michael Cai, Marco Del Negro, Marc P. Giannoni, Abhi Gupta, Pearl Li, and Erica Moszkowski. 2018. “DSGE Forecasts of the Lost Recovery.” Staff Reports, no. 844. March.
Rajashri Chakrabarti and Max Livingston. Forthcoming. “The Long Road to Recovery: New York Schools in the Aftermath of the Great Recession.” Economic Policy Review.
Brandyn Bok, Daniele Caratelli, Domenico Giannone, Argia Sbordone, and Andrea Tambalotti. 2018. “Macroeconomic Nowcasting and Forecasting with Big Data.” Annual Review of Economics, vol. 10, no. 1 (August): 615-43.
Meta Brown, John Grigsby, Wilbert van der Klaauw, Jaya Wen, and Basit Zafar. 2016. “Financial Education and the Debt Behavior of the Young.” The Review of Financial Studies 29, no. 9 (September): 2490-522.
Joshua Abel, Robert Rich, Joseph Song, and Joseph Tracy. 2016. “The Measurement and Behavior of Uncertainty: Evidence from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters.” Journal of Applied Econometrics 31, no. 3 (April-May): 533-50.
Robert C. Dent, Fatih Karahan, Benjamin Pugsley, and Ayşegül Şahin. 2016. “The Role of Startups in Structural Transformation.” American Economic Review 106, no. 5 (May): 219–23.
Checking in with Former RAs
After their time at the New York Fed, RAs typically pursue graduate studies, enter the workforce, become economics professors, or even join our staff.
“As a college graduate, the RA position appealed to me for many reasons. It offered me the opportunity to learn exciting new economic concepts, work on the research frontier, and make friends with a group of fun, intellectually stimulating people. Looking back on the two years I spent at the Fed, I find I was able to take advantage of these opportunities and more. And now that I’m well into my Ph.D. program, I continue to reap these rewards—the economic insight, programming skills, and research abilities I gained as an RA have proven invaluable to my graduate education. The work I did at the Fed helped refine my research interests and prepare me for the challenges that lie ahead, and the friends I made have formed a network of like-minded colleagues within the academic community. I can think of no better stepping stone to a Ph.D. program in economics than the New York Fed.”
“For me, working at the New York Fed as an RA in the Research Group was the perfect antidote to school before going back for more school. It offered me the chance to learn skills that are better taught on the job than in the classroom, and also gave me the opportunity to contribute to meaningful projects in interesting ways at the same time. It is an exceedingly fun, friendly, and collaborative environment—one where everyone's opinions and contributions are heard and valued, and where I made many close friends.”
“The RA position at the New York Fed offers unparalleled preparation for those who plan to pursue graduate school in economics and finance. Aside from dealing with large, complex data sets and estimating models using statistical programming packages, RAs work closely with Fed economists on research, gaining invaluable insight into how such projects are done at a high level. Learning the institutional details of the banking system and the financial-sector landscape has also helped me immensely in grad school when formulating my own research questions on financial intermediation. Weekly seminars by outside scholars provide another great opportunity to learn about economics and the research agendas now being pursued in many subfields. And as if that weren’t enough, the people at the New York Fed are great; you’ll learn a ton, make lasting friendships, and deepen your professional network.”
“Working as an RA at the New York Fed is one of the best ways to get your feet wet as a research economist and to figure out whether pursuing a Ph.D. is right for you. At the New York Fed, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with an amazing group of economists. And you will acquire a range of hard skills (programming, econometrics, building economic models) and soft skills (identifying interesting research questions) that will prove to be invaluable if you decide to pursue a research career.”
“I really enjoyed my time as an RA at the New York Fed. I acquired hard skills for data analysis and model estimation and was exposed to economic research topics in the fields of macroeconomics and monetary policy—subject areas completely different from my primary focus on education and labor economics as an undergraduate. Working in a mixed academic and policy environment also gave me perspective on how to actively interpret and apply new models in the context of the changing economy and, more importantly, shed light on the gap between existing models and policy demands today. Seeing the need for both theoretical and empirical models firsthand has fueled my research interests and enriched my understanding of the important interplay between academic research and policy.”
