Summer Internship - Research Department - Macro (onsite)

Company

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is one of the 12 regional Reserve Banks that, together with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the Federal Reserve System. It helps formulate and implement monetary policy, supervises banks and savings and loan holding companies, and provides financial services to depository institutions and the federal government. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia serves eastern and central Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware.

Bring your passion and expertise, and we’ll provide the opportunities that will challenge you and propel your growth!

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is seeking an undergraduate level Sophomore, Junior, or Senior, preferably economics major, with research experience, but students with non-economics major with similar knowledge and skills may also be considered.  This opening will be onsite.  The work schedule is Monday – Friday (40 hour per week).  This is a 10-week paid internship.  The hourly rate for this position is $22.00 per hour.  

Intern projects:

The research project you will work on is trying to document and understand the heterogeneity in the marginal propensity to consume (MPC), using the data on economic stimulus payments during the previous three recessions (2001, 2008, 2020).

You will download the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) during the last three recessions, together with the special data modules related to the stimulus payments, merge and clean the data following the series of work by Jonathan Parker, compute the consumption response to stimulus payment receipts of each household (which is the MPC), and document the distribution of the MPC. This step requires running complex regressions to identify the MPC in a messy dataset.

After documenting the distribution, you will try to compute what fraction of the disparity can be explained by various characteristics (age, sex, race, family composition, income, liquid wealth holding, etc).

You will write up the results, and hopefully there will be a small research paper out of it. You also have a chance to present the findings within the Bank.

Required Skills:

• Microsoft office suite fluency required
• Knowledge in economics and statistics/econometrics.
• Experiences with large dataset and statistical software (such as Matlab or Stata) to process the dataset.
• Academic writing since the intern will work on an academic research project.

Preferred Competencies:

Strong communication skills 

Ability to work on a large dataset(s)

Ability to write a long computer code to process and analyze the dataset.

Strong problem-solving skills

Excellent attention to details

Good organizational skills

Ability to work independently and with teams

Flexibility to manage multiple priorities

Other:

Sitting at a computer for long periods of time

Additional Information:

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia takes your information privacy seriously. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia staff will only email you from the “@phil.frb.org” domain or through the Workday system “rb@myworkday.com”.  If you are initially contacted by phone, feel free to request that the caller provide you with their email address to validate their identity.  If you have any questions about the validity of someone who contacts you regarding this position, please email the Talent Acquisition team at TalentAcquisition@phil.frb.org.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia believes that diversity, equity and inclusion among our employees is essential to our success as an organization, and we want to recruit, develop and retain the most accomplished people from a diverse candidate pool. To support a workplace culture of belonging, we offer nine employee resource groups (ERGs) and a 100 percent rating on the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Corporate Equality Index. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

• We have nine employee resource groups (ERGs) to support a diverse workforce. Abilities (supporting disabilities and allies), African Heritage, Asian-Pacific, Freedom (supporting LQBTQ+ and allies), Talent Forward (supporting career growth), Women United, Latin and Hispanic Heritage, Working Families and Veterans. ERGs are open to all employees.

• We will ensure tha