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Senior economist Kartik Athreya discusses how he became interested in economics, and how credit and asset markets can help the poor and the young.
Kartik Athreya earned his bachelor's degree at Iowa State University and his doctorate at the University of Iowa. He joined the Richmond Fed in 2000 after working for Citibank in New York City. This is how Athreya explains his job in his "Meet an Economist" video:
"I study questions pertaining to households’ use of credit. For example, my doctoral dissertation was on unsecured debt and bankruptcy reform. More generally, I’m interested in income and wealth inequality, and especially how credit markets and risk affect them. ... The Richmond Fed is an exciting place to pursue this work. We work very hard to integrate the findings of frontier academic research into policy making. It’s intellectually honest. We’re not agenda-driven at all."
