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 (see further information section), The trainee grant is €2,120 per month plus an accommodation allowance (see further information section)
• Working time: Full time
• Place of work: Frankfurt am Main, Germany
• Closing date: 13.01.2025

Your team

You will be part of either the Monetary Policy Research Division or the senior management team in the Directorate General Research. Our team currently comprises about 30 economists and ten trainees. 

We carry out high-quality research on cutting-edge issues relevant to monetary policy, financial stability and banking supervision. Our economists regularly publish in leading academic journals, coordinate research networks and prepare policy notes for ECB decision-making bodies.

In your role as Student Research Assistant Trainee or PhD Trainee, you will support our team of economists in their research projects. Depending on your specific profile and preferences, you will be assigned either to a team focusing on empirical topics (e.g. compiling and analysing cross-sectional, time-series and panel datasets) or to a team focusing on theoretical work (e.g. helping to solve and estimate linear and non-linear general equilibrium models). Throughout your traineeship you will have the opportunity to contribute to different projects and work closely with researchers from different areas of expertise. In addition, you may have the opportunity to support large-scale projects our teams are involved in, such as the ECB’s Consumer Expectations Survey or Household Finance and Consumption Survey.

The ECB is an inclusive employer, and we strive to reflect the diversity of the population we serve. We encourage you to apply irrespective of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or other characteristics.

Our economists are currently working on the following topics. 

• Macroeconomic models: Topics include developing, solving and estimating general equilibrium models using perturbation or global methods, as well as contributing to analyses on topics such as the transmission of standard and non-standard monetary policy; the interactions between monetary and fiscal policies; the nexus between monetary policy, financial stability and macroprudential policy; 
• Time series: Topics include maintaining and further developing existing tools such as structural vector autoregressions, Bayesian time-series econometric models, unobserved components models and non-linear time-series models. They also include empirically analysing, for example, the transmission of monetary policy, financial shocks and inflation dynamics, as well as creating and maintaining databases of quarterly, monthly, daily or high-frequency data from external data providers;
• Micro panel and cross-sectional data: Topics include analysing large high-frequency contract-level financial data, product-level price data, firm balance sheet data, supervisory bank data and new survey data to advance our understanding of the distributional effects of monetary policy and macroprudential policies. Also included are analyses of monetary policy and its microeconomic transmission through households and firms; the impact of monetary policy and its communication on households’ and firms’ expectations and economic decisions; and the effects of digitalisation on households and firms.

Your role

As a Student Research Assistant Trainee or PhD Trainee you will support research projects by:

• solving and estimating frontier macro models;
• developing mathematical, statistical and econometric procedures for research projects;
• contributing to empirical analyses and analytical projects;
• constructing and maintaining monetary, financial and economic databases;
• working with a broad range of unique confidential datasets, macroeconomic and microeconomic data, and financial, supervisory and intraday market data;
• establishing and maintaining cross-sectional, time-series and panel datasets.

Depending on your areas of expertise, your work may also require you to conduct microeconometric analyses related to surveys (primarily in Stata), big-data analyses (using R, Python and SQL), also in cloud computing, and time-series analyses (primarily in MATLAB). You may also be required to solve, calibrate and simulate DSGE models with banking and financial frictions (using MATLAB and Dynare).

The position offers you excellent opportunities to work closely with our economists and our management team. You will support them in academic research projects and operational work such as the preparation of policy-related notes for the ECB’s Executive Board. The traineeship programme will allow you to develop your analytical skills, enhance your quantitative skills and gain an insight into the ECB’s research activities and policymaking processes. It will expose you to ideas, debates and challenges that could provide a useful foundation for your future career and/or postgraduate studies. You will have access to internal seminars and conferences organised by the ECB. 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: 

• for a traineeship paid at €2,120, a master’s degree and at least two years of PhD studies in the field of economics, statistics, finance, data science or a related field;
• for a traineeship paid at €1,170, a bachelor’s degree or higher in economics, statistics, finance, data science, mathematics, engineering or a related field;
• mastery of basic econometrics (linear regression, hypothesis testing, instrumental variables, panel estimation and vector autoregression);
• proficiency in at least one of the following statistical software packages: MATLAB, Stata, 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: 

• for a traineeship paid at €1,170, a master’s degree or completion of at least one year of study towards obtaining a master’s degree in economics, statistics, finance, computer science, mathematics, engineering or a related field;
• experience in at least one of the following areas: solving and simulating DSGE models; solving heterogeneous agent and/or non-linear macro models; performing vector autoregression and cointegration analysis; estimating difference-in-differences or propensity score matching econometric models; analysing macroeconomic or financial time-series data; compiling, querying and analysing large microeconomic databases (high-frequency data, administrative data, household or firm-level surveys, balance sheet data and micro price data); web-scraping, textual analysis or using machine learning techniques;
• experience of cloud computing (e.g. Amazon AWS);
• experience of survey data analysis (e.g. using national surveys or the Eurosystem’s Household Finance and Consumption Survey, the EU Labour Force Survey or others);
• experience of one or more of the following: macroeconomic data, financial market data, firm-level data, accounting/supervisory bank data, other microdata or large datasets;
• familiarity with one or more of the following databases/providers: Bloomberg, LSEG (formerly Refinitiv), DataStream, Haver Analytics, Moody's Analytics BankFocus (formerly Bureau van Dijk’s Orbis BankFocus), Fitch Connect, Dealogic, or large micro price datasets.

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/PhD traineeship of 6 months, with a possible extension to up to 12 months in total.

Other details on the conditions applicable to traineeships at the ECB can be found on our website.

Application and selection process

The recruitment process for this position will include an online interview. 

Further information on how to apply is available on our website.

If you are not selected for this position but are still considered suitable, you will be placed on a reserve list for 12 months from the closing date for applications, from which you might be considered for other traineeship positions within the ECB.