CHICAGO (May 24, 2022) – Kristin Butcher has joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago as Vice President and Director of Microeconomic Research. The appointment was effective May 17.

Butcher is an applied microeconomist whose research focuses on children and families, immigration, health, criminal justice, labor economics, social mobility, and higher education.

Prior to joining the Chicago Fed, Butcher served as director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, where she was a senior fellow in Economic Studies. She is the inaugural holder of the Marshall I. Goldman Chair in Economics at Wellesley College, where she chaired the economics department for six years.

This will be Butcher’s second stint at the Chicago Fed after working as a senior economist in the Bank's Economic Research Department from 2002-2007. She also served as a program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, held faculty positions at Virginia Tech and Boston College, as well as visiting faculty positions at Princeton and MIT.

Butcher holds a Ph.D and M.A. in economics from Princeton University, an M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. in economics from Wellesley College.

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Background

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks that, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the nation’s central bank. The Chicago Reserve Bank serves the seventh Federal Reserve District, which encompasses the northern portions of Illinois and Indiana, southern Wisconsin, the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, and the state of Iowa. In addition to participation in the formulation of monetary policy, each Reserve Bank supervises member banks and bank holding companies, provides financial services to depository institutions and the U.S. government, and monitors economic conditions in its District.