UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Masashi Takahashi is already familiar with the economists at the Federal Reserve Board.
“I cite a lot of papers written by them,” said Takahashi, a Smeal College of Business doctoral candidate in business administration in the real estate area.
Takahashi will soon get to know those economists on a deeper level and receive direct feedback from them. He has been accepted into the Federal Reserve Board’s Dissertation Fellows program and will spend 12 weeks this summer working with the board’s Division of Monetary Affairs in Washington, D.C., which he said he hopes will help him with research for his dissertation. Takahashi is the first Smeal student to be accepted into the prestigious program.
Takahashi’s research interests include real estate, asset pricing and financial intermediation. His working job market paper examines the role the ownership structure of fixed-income assets plays in the transmission of monetary policy and estimates institutional demand in the U.S. fixed-income market across treasuries, agency mortgage-backed securities, corporate bonds and municipal bonds. He plans to explore those relationships and others during his time in the program.
“My research topic is kind of niche, so this is a very important opportunity for me," Takahashi said.
The Division of Monetary Affairs supports the Board’s Federal Open Market Committee meetings and conducts research on monetary policy, a subject Takahashi has researched extensively during his time in Smeal.
“Initially, I was not very interested in monetary policy. I was just interested in real estate as one key financial asset in the economy,” Takahashi said. “But I learned that because real estate is a key asset in the economy, the government cares about the movement of real estate prices or mortgage activity of the economy, and it widened my perspective.”
Takahashi has presented papers internationally at the Econometric Society Asian Meeting and at the Financial Intermediation Research Society (FIRS) Conference, Ph.D. Session. He has received the Peter E. Liberti and Judy D. Olian Scholarship for outstanding academic success and has taught the "RM450: Contemporary Issues in Real Estate Markets" course for three semesters.
“He’s a very inquisitive, thoughtful researcher,” said Takahashi’s adviser, Jason and Julie Borrelli Faculty Chair in Real Estate and Smeal doctoral program director Brent Ambrose. “He thinks very carefully about things. He just wants to know what happens.”
Takahashi said he chose Smeal for its doctoral program in real estate, one of the few of its kind globally, and noted the support he has received from Ambrose and Jiro Yoshida, Arthur P. Pasquarella Professor in Real Estate.
“I like that I can talk with the invited speakers and real estate-oriented researchers here,” he said.
After he graduates in 2027, Takahashi said he hopes to continue to do research that is both useful to society and inspiring to academics and those in industry. His time in the Fellows program will help him make connections and broaden his understanding of his field.
“It’ll be a big boost professionally for him to work with the economists down there and talk with them about his project,” Ambrose said. “It’s a testament to the quality of the program we’re running that our students are being chosen for these types of honors.”
Takahashi said he was honored to be the first Smeal student to be accepted into the fellows program but had a modest interpretation of why he was selected.
“I would say this is not because of my progress,” he said. “I think this is because real estate fields are expanding their influence in macroeconomics. I can feel that trend, and I think it’s pushing me.”