Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Announces New Research Director

ST. LOUIS – The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has named Carlos Garriga as its new senior vice president and director of research. Garriga, a noted economist, is currently a vice president and research economist at the St. Louis Fed. He will succeed Chris Waller, who was recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a governor of the Federal Reserve Board. Garriga’s appointment will become effective Jan. 1 (or upon Waller’s swearing-in as a Federal Reserve governor if it occurs after that date). Garriga will also become a member of the St. Louis Fed’s Management Committee.

“Carlos will do a great job leading our research function and continuing the Bank’s tradition of world-class thought leadership,” St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard said to colleagues.

In his new role, Garriga will oversee the St. Louis Fed’s Research division, which ranks among the top of all research institutions in central banking and academic research worldwide. He will also continue to advise President Bullard in preparation for the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings, which he has attended. In addition, he will direct the growth of the Bank’s data services, such as FRED®, which currently contains 767,000 data series with 14 million visits annually, as well as the Bank’s Economic Education program, a leader in the Federal Reserve System with more than 700,000 student engagements in its portal across 70+ countries.

“I’m honored to carry on the St. Louis Fed tradition of pioneering research in macroeconomics,” Garriga said. “My previous roles at the Bank and in academia as well as my own research interests have prepared me well to serve in this role.”

Garriga’s research focus is in the area of macroeconomics and housing, household finance, monetary economics and asset pricing, and public economics. His work has been published in many leading economic journals (the American Economic Review, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Monetary Economics, European Economic Review and Journal of the European Economic Association), as well as chapters in books published by the University of Chicago Press and MIT Press. His CV can be found at https://research.stlouisfed.org/econ/garriga/vita.

Garriga joined the St. Louis Fed in 2007. He advises President Bullard on issues related to monetary policy and serves as managing editor of the St. Louis Fed’s Review, one of the oldest peer‐reviewed publications within the Federal Reserve System. He is a member of the editorial advisory board at Public Finance Review and a former associate editor at the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control.

In addition to conducting research, Garriga has held responsibilities for recruiting research economists, transforming external events such as the Bank’s Economic Policy Conference, acting as co‐organizer of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Economics Dynamics, as well as managing the Bank’s summer internship program for Ph.D. students.

Prior to joining the St. Louis Fed, Garriga was an assistant professor of economics at Florida State University and at the Universitat de Barcelona (Spain). He has been a visiting scholar at several international central banks and a number of Reserve banks within the Federal Reserve System, as well as at prestigious universities in Europe, the U.K. and the U.S.

Garriga received his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in economics from the Universitat de Barcelona in 1995 and 1999, respectively. Garriga is a native of Barcelona and lives in St. Louis with his family.