Fed taps veteran economist to oversee international finance division

Beth Anne Wilson will be the Federal Reserve’s new director on Feb. 1 of the division at the central bank that watches over movements in global financial and commodity markets, and reports back to the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the agency said Wednesday.

Now a deputy director of the Fed’s Division of International Finance, Wilson will succeed Steven B. Kamin, who the agency said is retiring at the end of April; he will serve as a division senior adviser until then.

The international finance division oversees the monitoring and forecasting of the global economy by analyzing key international issues, including movements in global financial and commodity markets, the Fed said. The division also supports the Fed’s engagement with foreign central banks and international organizations such as the Group of Seven, Group of Twenty, and Bank for International Settlements, the central bank said.

Wilson herself will be responsible for briefing the FOMC on global economic and financial developments.

She joined the Fed in 1995 and the international finance division in 1998. She also served as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers and as a visiting professor at Georgetown University. The Fed said she was presented with the Fed Board’s Special Achievement Award in 2010 for her work leading the board’s monitoring of the euro-area crisis.

She earned a B.A. in economics and history from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Federal Reserve Board appoints Beth Anne Wilson as director of the Division of International Finance, effective Feb. 1