Student Research Assistant Traineeship Programme – Financial Research

In the Student Research Assistant Traineeship Programme – Financial Research, as a trainee Student Research Assistant, you will support our economists in their research and policy projects.

General Information

Type of contract Traineeship

Who can apply? EU nationals eligible for our traineeship programme

Grant The trainee grant is €1,170 per month plus an accommodation allowance.

Working time Full time

Place of work Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Your team

You will be part of either the Financial Research Division or the senior management team in the Directorate General Research. Our Directorate General comprises around 25 economists conducting policy-relevant research on topics related to financial and monetary economics.

The Directorate General Research is one of Europe’s leading economic research departments, producing high-quality academic and policy-relevant research. We cover topical issues such as macro-financial linkages, the interaction between monetary and financial stability policies, financial innovations like fintech, AI and digital currencies, and the financial implications of climate change. We publish articles in leading academic journals and the ECB’s own publications, such as its Working Paper Series and its Research Bulletin, and prepare policy notes and reports for internal and external use.

In your role as a trainee Student Research Assistant, you will support our economists in their research and policy projects. Your tasks will typically consist of compiling and analysing cross-sectional, time series and panel datasets or developing, solving and estimating macro-financial dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models.

Your role

As a trainee Student Research Assistant, you will support research projects by:

• constructing and maintaining financial, monetary and economic databases;
• presenting data in conjunction with basic economic and statistical analyses;
• developing mathematical, statistical and econometric procedures for use in research projects;
• supporting and maintaining software tools and hardware installations.

Depending on your areas of expertise, you will also conduct microeconometric and time series analyses or solve, calibrate and simulate DSGE models with banking and financial frictions.

The traineeship offers you excellent opportunities to work closely with ECB economists and gain first-hand exposure to world-class research. You will be able to develop your analytical skills and obtain insights into the ECB’s research activities and policymaking processes. You will also engage with new ideas and perspectives that will help you in your future career or graduate studies. This traineeship programme is particularly well suited to candidates interested in pursuing further graduate studies and building a research-oriented career in economics, finance or related fields. You will be part of a multicultural team that strives for continuous innovation to make a positive impact on the lives of European citizens.

Qualifications, experience and skills

Essential:

• a bachelor’s degree or higher in economics, statistics, finance, mathematics or a related field;
• experience in at least one of the following technical areas of expertise: compiling large cross-sectional datasets (e.g. financial transactions data, household or firm-level survey data, or bank/firm balance sheet data); microeconometric modelling (e.g. fixed and random effects estimation, difference-in-difference estimation, propensity score-matching estimation, event study analysis and structural methods); time series modelling (e.g. vector autoregression, state-space modelling and quantile regression); DSGE modelling (e.g. development, solution, calibration and estimation);
• in-depth knowledge of at least one of the following high-level programming languages: Stata, MATLAB, Python or R;
• a good knowledge of the MS Office package;
• an advanced (C1) command of English and an intermediate (B1) command of at least one other official language of the EU, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

Desired:

• a master’s degree (or being close to completing a master’s degree) in economics, statistics, finance, mathematics or a related field;
• familiarity with financial data providers such as Orbis, Fitch Connect, S&P Capital IQ Pro, Dealogic, BankFocus, Bloomberg or LSEG Workspace;
• familiarity with macroeconomic and financial statistics as presented in international databases (e.g. the ECB Data Portal, ECB Household Finance and Consumption Survey, statistics provided by Eurostat and/or the Bank for International Settlements, International Monetary Fund International Financial Statistics);
• experience of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, including their application to economic and financial data analysis;
• familiarity with solving, calibrating and simulating DSGE models using perturbation or global methods in MATLAB and Dynare.

You are curious and eager to learn, and want to further develop your ability to analyse complex information. You are keen to collaborate with others, pursue team goals and learn from other people’s diverse perspectives. You strive to know and anticipate stakeholder needs, and will signal any need for change and propose alternative solutions.

You are motivated to contribute to the ECB’s mission, to serve the citizens of the EU as a member of a public institution and to work with colleagues from all over Europe. You are keen to be part of our team and to use your skills and competencies to achieve the aims of this position.

Further information

Initial traineeship of six months, with a possible extension to up to 12 months in total.