Ben Henken is a business economist in the economic research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In this role, he provides policy analysis and communications support to senior departmental staff.

Prior to joining the Chicago Fed, Henken was a senior associate at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, DC, where he worked on state and local government finance. Before that, he was a research associate at the Yale Program on Financial Stability, where he studied government policy responses to the global financial crisis and worked on two books written on the subject. Henken has a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in applied economics from Johns Hopkins University.