Narayana Kocherlakota, new president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, has the daunting task of helping pull the U.S. economy out of a recession.

He'll lead the Minneapolis Fed’s 1,000 employees, who have a heavy portfolio, says Finance and Commerce, ranging from supervising financial institutions to managing payment systems and gathering economic data across its five-state area.

Said Finance and Commerce:

Kocherlakota won’t become a voting member of the Federal Open Markets Committee, which sets monetary policy, until 2011, but he can exert influence almost immediately, Anton said. “Presidents are all part of the discussion, and he will have real impact there.”

During those discussions Kocherlakota will deliberate national monetary policy, but he’ll also represent the Ninth District, making sure that the region’s strengths and weaknesses - measured by his economists - are weighed into broader policy, said David Vang, chairman of the finance department at the University of St. Thomas. “In that sense, he’s an advocate for the district.”

That intellectual challenge won’t just focus on monetary policy. The Minneapolis Fed’s reputation and influence grew around a body of trailblazing applied research, and Fed watchers say that will probably continue under Kocherlakota.

Gary Stern, the Minneapolis Fed’s president for the last 24 years, nurtured those pursuits and produced some of the bank’s most prominent recent research himself. Stern and Ron Feldman, a senior vice president at the bank, studied and produced a stream of articles, books and presentations warning against the hazards created by financial institutions that grow “too big to fail.”