Dallas Fed names Karel Mertens as research director and senior vice president

DALLAS—The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas today announced that Karel Mertens has been named director of research and senior vice president in charge of the Statistics Department.

Mertens is currently senior economic policy advisor at the Dallas Fed and has served as interim director of research since February.  

In his new position, he will lead the Dallas Fed’s effort to grow research thought leadership, advise on matters related to monetary policy, and guide Statistics’ efforts to collect and analyze data from across the Eleventh Federal Reserve District to better inform monetary policy and economic research.

“Karel brings a strong research portfolio to his role and exhibits the leadership to build on the important growth of our economic research in recent years,” said Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan.

His research interests include business cycles, fiscal policy, banking and monetary economics, empirical macroeconomics and time series econometrics. His recent work focuses on the macroeconomic effects of fiscal and credit policies.

Mertens is a research fellow at the Center of Economic Policy Research and a former research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Prior to joining the Bank in 2017, he was an associate professor of economics at Cornell University.

Mertens is a native of Belgium and holds a Licentiaat in economics from Ghent University, an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and a PhD in economics from the European University Institute.

The Dallas Fed serves the Eleventh Federal Reserve District, which encompasses Texas, northern Louisiana and southern New Mexico.

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Media contact:
James Hoard
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Phone: 214-922-5307
Email: james.hoard@dal.frb.org