Kristoph Kleiner ‘09 is spending his summer as one of three doctoral research interns with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Kleiner’s responsibilities include conducting independent research, holding seminars for other research economists, and writing reports for economists on various statistical analyses.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of 12 banks, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., which comprise the Federal Reserve System. Beyond the traditional responsibilities of a Reserve Bank, the New York Federal Reserve also conducts open market operations, intervenes in foreign exchange markets, and stores gold for foreign governments, banks, and agencies.

Kristoph Kleiner presenting his recent research at the New York Federal Reserve.

Kleiner is pursuing a Ph.D. in economics at Duke University with a focus on financial economics. He has held research assistant positions for several faculty members in finance, macroeconomics, and microeconomics. The scope of his projects includes the current measures of the housing market and household spending decisions.

“In the field of economics, you need to be creative to find important questions that haven’t been solved or considered, and you need to have a strong understanding of math and statistics to be able to solve your problem and defend your answer,” says Kleiner.

Kleiner’s most recent project was a joint effort with his advisor at Duke and a professor at UCLA focused on using real estate data to estimate the value of a large random sample of houses throughout the nation. Ultimately, his research has concluded that the current measures of sales in the housing market are incorrect due to a variety of reasons.

“Much of my research is based on the idea that current models are incorrect due to poor estimation techniques and poor data,” says Kleiner.

While at NC State, Kleiner studied abroad in Australia, and interned with GlaxoSmithKline as a knowledge exploration consultant and as a fixed income analyst with a brokerage firm. He received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and two masters’ degrees—one in economics and the other in financial mathematics.

“The faculty and staff at NC State offered me the freedom to pursue a unique degree path, the guidance to help me understand all the opportunities available, and the rigor to prepare me for tough Ph.D. courses and a challenging research agenda,” says Kleiner. “The Park seminars, conferences, and learning labs gave me an understanding of the major issues we face today, and the Park staff gave me the support to go after them.”

As a Park alumnus, Kleiner continues to support the Park Scholarships program by advising mathematics and economics students on courses and graduate school options. He will be spending Labor Day weekend in Rocky Mountain National Park with the Class of 2013 on their senior retreat.

After finishing his internship at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Kleiner will return to Duke as a fellow in the Program for Advanced Research in the Social Sciences. Upon completion of his doctorate, Kleiner intends to become an economist and a professor at a business school.