The primary mission of the St. Louis Fed Research Division is to provide high-quality, timely advice to the Bank’s president about monetary policy and banking issues. Producing and communicating important economic research in areas such as macroeconomics, international economics, and regional economics are also crucial components of the Division’s responsibilities. Working with the Division’s economists, research associates (RAs) at the St. Louis Fed play an integral role in achieving these objectives.
RAs are adept at collecting and organizing data from a variety of sources. They also use software packages such as Stata, SAS, R, MATLAB, Fortran, EViews, Python, and C++ to perform statistical, econometric, and computational research for economists to use in presentations and academic publications.
To gain a deeper understanding of current economic issues, RAs
RAs’ contributions frequently result in coauthored articles for economic publications and academic journals (see sidebar). Additionally, RAs summarize data and anecdotal information on regional economic conditions for the Beige Book and other regional research projects.