Richard Davis, retired executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, died April 20, 2019, after a brief illness, at age 85.

Davis graduated from Amherst College in 1955 and earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1961 from Princeton. He joined the New York Fed’s research department in 1960, and remained for 34 years. In the late 1970s, Davis served as senior adviser to Paul Volcker ’49, then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

He wrote many articles on domestic economic policy and banking, served on the Brookings Institution’s panel on economic activity, and lectured at several colleges and universities. On the Fed’s centennial in 2014, Davis was cited among the first economists educated in theory and econometrics (versus finance) who effected an “ideological and generational” change at the bank.

Living in Amagansett, Long Island, N.Y., since the early 1970s, Davis pursued interests beyond economics: art, gardening, and politics. A prolific landscape and still-life artist, he supported the Long Island Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and efforts to preserve land in central Virginia.

Davis is survived by his sister, Ann Davis Dunn, a nephew, and two nieces.

Graduate alumni memorials are prepared by the APGA.