Jeffrey P. Thompson is a vice president and economist in the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Research Department, where he is the director of the New England Public Policy Center. Prior to joining the Boston Fed, Thompson was a principal economist at the Federal Reserve Board and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute. He specializes in public and labor economics, household finance, applied microeconomics, income, wealth and consumption inequality, state and local taxes, and regional economics. Thompson earned his Ph.D. in economics from Syracuse University.