Anamaria Piloiu, Deutsche Bank

“I highly enjoyed being exposed to different angles of the same topic”

Before taking up an Economist position at Deutsche Bank Research in June 2014, Anamaria Piloiu worked at the IMFS as a research and teaching assistant for almost four years. During this time she also did Ph.D. internships at the European Central Bank and at the International Monetary Fund, where she worked on research projects on macro-financial linkages. Anamaria, who was born in Romania, earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Goethe University in August 2016. Prior to her Ph.D. studies, she obtained a M.Sc. in Quantitative Economics from Goethe University and a B.Sc. in Economics from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. Anamaria’s research interests lie in the fields of empirical macroeconomics, monetary economics and macro-financial linkages.

What are your main tasks at Deutsche Bank?

My work at Deutsche Bank focuses on monitoring and analyzing global macroeconomic risks, economic trends and international developments. A large part of my work is related to the design of macroeconomic scenarios for stress testing, including narrative definition, time series projections, econometric analysis and scenario comparison. Another part of my work is characterized by the coverage of several developed countries from a sovereign risk perspective. The country expertise is used for senior management briefings and for informing business lines about relevant developments in specific economies. Also related to global risk monitoring, I have been working on developing an early warning indicators platform for quantifying the risk of corrections of a wide range of asset classes

What do you like most about your job?

What I like most is the environment, which is very dynamic and constantly stimulating. My job requires me to be up to date with the latest global economic developments and to have a forward looking perspective on economic issues. I also enjoy being challenged to think out of the box, as most macroeconomic scenarios designed for stress testing lie outside historical boundaries and are fairly difficult to calibrate. Many times, in such scenarios, the usefulness of the information obtained from the analysis of the historical behavior of macroeconomic and financial time series is somewhat limited, while theoretical predictions on particular economic interactions are yet to be researched.

You had several offers at the job market. Why did you choose Deutsche Bank?

Although the offers that I have received at the job market were very appealing, I decided to take the Economist position at Deutsche Bank because I wanted to gain a thorough knowledge of how the Research department of a major global investment bank functions. Moreover, the financial industry is one of the main pillars of the economics discipline, together with academic research and policy making. I also wanted to apply my quantitative skills on a highly relevant area for the financial industry and regulators, namely macroeconomic stress testing. In addition, I was attracted by the opportunity of complementing my expertise with hands on experience in the financial industry and of gaining a more comprehensive understanding of how different stress tests are designed and implemented across the industry.

What was the main focus of your research?

My research mainly focused on the implications of economic uncertainty for macroeconomic and financial stability. The effects of economic uncertainty, its origins and its nature have played an important role in policy discussions and in macroeconomic theory for decades. In my research I studied how the perceptions of professional forecasters and of the general public about monetary authorities respond to transitory shocks to economic policy uncertainty, on one hand, and how cross border credit flows are affected by the dynamics of economic uncertainty, on the other hand. Another part of my research examined bank asset quality and the factors contributing to its dynamics

Looking back, what do you appreciate most regarding your doctorate at the IMFS?

IMFS is a great platform that facilitates the get-together of academic researchers, policy makers and financial agents. Being part of the institute and being exposed to the great deal of conferences and events organized there, gave me an enhanced understanding of the economics discipline as a whole. I highly enjoyed being exposed to different angles of the same topic. It was fascinating to witness how different preeminent economic experts, coming from diverse backgrounds i.e. academia, international organizations, central banks, financial institutions, etc. judge a specific economic concept and to observe the interaction of their views.