Like most of my colleagues, as a young economist an academic career was attractive to me because it offered the freedom to analyse economic questions I personally found interesting. My fields of interest have always been monetary macroeconomics and international economics. Throughout my academic career I kept a focus on the empirical dimension of the problems at hand.
And now, having turned into a central banker, I still find it extremely useful to underpin the analysis of current economic issues with empirics. However, I now have the privilege of using my limited time for asking only questions which are relevant to policy. It is my staff that is finding the answers.