Principle Economist

First American
Washington, DC - United States
S: Competitive

Job Description
The Principal Economist is responsible for working with the Chief Economist to develop and implement an economic and research strategy providing economic analysis and prototyping business models, and assisting in the preparation of analysis of issues related to housing and mortgage finance for policymakers and the housing community. This individual is responsible for the conduct of research studies (economic and econometric analysis of public record, mortgage, and real estate data). The individual will have extensive experience working with large data sets, data visualization, econometric model development, and real estate and housing finance data. Areas of specialized experience may include: real estate valuations; housing policy; mortgage performance; economic forecasting; real estate market forecasting.

• Develop and manage research agenda; Planning, design, development and implementation of quantitative or qualitative research projects on various housing related topics;
• Potentially manage research staff for internal and external policy analysis and research;
• Lead complex economic research projects. This includes determining appropriate methodologies and approach, coordinating the work of others, complex data analysis, presenting results to internal and external audiences, preparing presentations and publications, and properly documenting the project work;
• Assist with development, implementation and interpretation of empirical models for internal and external customers.

Job Qualifications
Expert research, problem solving, and analytic skills, including the ability to analyze and understand housing and mortgage finance trends from the perspective of policy and program stakeholders;
• PhD in Economics or Statistics or a directly related quantitative field or MS/MA with at least 5 years of related post-graduate work experience or BA/BS with at least 7 years of related work experience;
• Experience working with data visualization tools (e.g. Tableau);
• Experience with creating, organizing, analyzing and managing large data sets and using statistical software (e.g. SAS, R, Stata, SPSS)
• Excellent interpersonal skills; ability to understand and respond to multiple internal and external stakeholder demands and manage and handle conflict constructively with limited supervisory support;
• Excellent communication, writing and editing skills including experience writing blog posts, research briefs and publication articles.
· Ability to explain complicated policy concepts and quantitative results in a concise manner;
Self-motivation, the ability to work independently, and the capacity to work as a team member.

Job summary