Karen Pence
President

Karen Pence is a deputy associate director at the Federal Reserve Board. Her research focuses on mortgage default, household financial decisions, and the financial institutions that originate and service loans to households. Most recently, she has focused on the increased market share of nonbanks in mortgage lending and servicing and the attendant risks. Her research has been published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the National Tax Journal, and other outlets. Highlights of her Federal Reserve career include working on a financial-crisis era program aimed at restoring liquidity to the commercial mortgage backed securities and other asset-backed securities markets (the Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility) and co-leading a Federal Reserve team that authored a white paper on possible policy responses to the stagnant housing and mortgage markets in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Currently at the Board she has oversight responsibility for the Survey of Consumer Finances and is a leader in the Board’s work to increase diversity and inclusion in the economics profession. She also serves as the Chair of the Board of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and is a Board member of the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She served on the Board of Directors of AREUEA from 2008-10 and was a Postdoctoral Honoree at the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate in 2009. She has a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College. Her website is available at https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/karen-m-pence.htm.