Interview Series: Egon Zakrajšek
Egon Zakrajšek is a
Slovenian economist working
at the Federal Reserve Board
in Washington, DC.
At the Fed, Mr. Zakrajšek is an
Assistant Director in the
Division of Monetary Affairs.
Before coming to the Fed, Mr.
Zakrajšek was a research
economist at the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York and
also taught economics at
Columbia and Johns Hopkins
universities. He has a Ph.D. in
economics from New York
University.
At the Fed, Mr. Zakrajšek is an Assistant Director in the Division of Monetary Affairs. Before coming to the Fed, Mr. Zakrajšek was a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and also taught economics at Columbia and Johns Hopkins universities. He has a Ph.D. in economics from New York University.
The Fed has played a major part and undertaken many unprecedented measures since the financial crisis broke out. What has been the role of your team?
The division of Monetary Affairs provides key support and analysis to the Board and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) pertaining to all aspects of domestic monetary policy. Over the last year or so, the Fed has taken unprecedented steps to support the global financial system, and the staff in my division has been intimately involved in the design and implementation of the various lending programs; the analysis of their efficacy; and how to conduct monetary policy in an environment of very low interest rates—the so-called “zero bound” problem.
Your job must be extremely stressful and probably overwhelming at times; what does your »typical« working day look like?
Needless to say, the last couple of years have placed extraordinary demands on the entire staff. Because I am not a morning person, I typically arrive at my office around 9 in the morning. I do try to leave around 6:30 in the evening— often unsuccessfully—so that I can spend some time with my wife Elizabeth and our threeyear old daughter Lydia, as well as our two beagles, Monty and Chloe. By 9:00, when Lydia is sound asleep, I log back in and work until midnight or so, though I have pulled more than my share of “all nighters” over the past 20 months or so. Weekends have also become typical working days, and the entire senior staff is expected to be reachable 24/7 — my Blackberry, unfortunately, is always with me.
One of your connections to Slovenia is teaching. Can you tell us about your cooperation with the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics?
At both the University of Ljubljana and University of Primorska, the departments of mathematics have recently started programs in financial mathematics or mathematical economics. I think this is a great achievement for the Slovenian system of higher education, because students will finally have an option to learn the quantitative tools used in modern economics and finance. Young people interested in economic research will, therefore, be much better prepared to pursue graduate studies at top economics departments, most of which are in the US. This fall, I will teach a short graduate course in financial econometrics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Ljubljana, and I hope to step up my involvement with both universities in the future, conditional, of course, that the situation in global financial markets regains some semblance of normality.
