President Bullard: Life of an Academic Scholar

Before becoming president and CEO of the St. Louis Fed, James Bullard worked in the Bank’s Research division. His most cited paper was “Learning about Monetary Policy Rules” (with Kaushik Mitra).

When asked what stood out most from his early days in Research, Bullard said, “[Y]ou’re allowed to pursue research ideas here. And our philosophy, and the philosophy at the time, was definitely that the economist is supposed to come up with the good ideas. … [Y]ou’re supposed to be pursuing research that you think is interesting, and I was certainly trying to do that.”

This video is part of a series of recent conversations with Bank staff in which Bullard reflected on what has occurred at the St. Louis Fed as well as nationally and internationally over his first 10 years as president. These conversations became the basis for the Bank’s 2017 annual report.

Additional Resources

• Annual Report: Alternatives to Inflation Targeting
• Research papers by President Bullard
• Working papers from the St. Louis Fed Research division