CV

Professional Experience
2022 (Jan.) -    : Research Economist II, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
2014 - 2021: Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
2010 - 2013: Senior Economic Analyst, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
2004 - 2010: Economic Analyst, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
2002 - 2004: Research Analyst, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
2001 - 2002: Student Intern, Center for Scholarly Technology, University of Southern California
Education
2021: PhD in Economics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

      Title: Essays in Forecasting and Empirical Macroeconomics [link]
       Advisor: Gary Koop (primary) and Julia Darby (secondary)
      Committee: Ana Galvao, Aubrey Poon, and Stuart McIntyre

2021: Postgraduate Diploma, in Research Methodology in Business and Management, University of Strathclyde

2012: MA in Economics, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, US

2002: MS in Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, US

2000: BS in Computer System Engineering, G.I.K Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Pakistan

Research Interests

 Primary: Applied macroeconomics; inflation; nowcasting and forecasting; monetary policy

 Secondary: Bayesian econometrics; empirical finance; energy economics; machine learning and artificial intelligence

Awards

Spirit of Innovation Award: for successful development, implementation, and communication of innovative forecasting tool at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 2014 

Strategic Alignment Award: awarded at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 2005

Outstanding Academic Achievement Award: awarded at the University of Southern California, 2001

Best Senior Year Project Award: awarded by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) at the senior year project competition, GIK Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, 2000

United Way Outstanding Volunteer Award: awarded at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland in 2008, 2009 and 2010

Professional Development

Barcelona Graduate School of Economics: Macroeconometrics Summer School (2018)

Federal Reserve Bank of New York: 41st Central Banking Seminar (Oct. 2017; by nomination)

University of Pennsylvania: Penn Institute for Economic Research (PIER) Workshop on Quantitative Tools for Macroeconomic Policy Analysis (2016)

Northwestern University: Advanced Workshop for Central Bankers (on frontier models and techniques in Monetary Economics) organized by Center for International Macroeconomics (2009) 

National Association of Business Economics (NABE): Applied Econometrics (2008); Applied Time Series Analysis and Forecasting (2010); Economic Measurement Seminar (2011)

Timberlake Consultants: Time Series Analysis and Forecasting using Stata (2007)


Academic Journal Publications

  Please see here

Federal Reserve Publications/Policy Articles

  Please see here


Conference and Seminar Presentations


2024: ASSA 2024 Annual Meeting

2023: Swiss National Bank Research Conference (Zurich); Real-Time Data Analysis, Methods and Applications Conference organized by Bank of Spain (Madrid); Midwest Econometrics Group Conference (Cleveland Fed); Computational Finance and Econometrics Annual Conference (virtual) 

2022: ESCoE Conference on Economic Measurement; Society of Economic Measurement Annual Conference; Midwest Macroeconomics Spring Conference; 5th Vienna Workshop on High-Dimensional Times Series in Macroeconomics and Finance; North American Summer Meetings of the Econometric Society; 30th Symposium of the Society of Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics (virtual); SUERF European Money and Finance Forum (virtual); 25th Central Bank Macroeconomic Modeling Workshop (virtual)

2021: ESCoE Conference on Economic Measurement (virtual); 27th International Conference Computing in Economics and Finance (virtual); European Seminar on Bayesian Econometrics (virtual); Post-Graduate Research Away Day, University of Strathclyde (virtual); NBER-NSF Seminar on Bayesian Inference in Econometrics and Statistics (virtual); Real-Time Data Analysis, Methods and Applications Conference organized by Banque de France (virtual); State Bank of Pakistan (invited webinar); Computational Finance and Econometrics Annual Conference (virtual) 

2020: Joint Statistical Meetings, Philadelphia (virtual)

2019: Post-Graduate Research Away Day, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK; Invited Seminar presentation at Ohio University; 6th Rimini Time Series Econometrics Workshop; 94th Annual Conference Western Economic Association; Midwest Econometrics Group (MEG) Conference, Columbus, Ohio

2018: Post-Graduate Research Away Day, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK; Day-Ahead Inflation Workshop, Cleveland, OH; Society of Economic Measurement conference, Xiamen, China; International Institute of Forecasters’ 37th International Symposium on Forecasting, Boulder, Colorado; 2nd Central Bank Forecasting Conference at Bank of England, London, UK; Midwest Econometrics Group (MEG) Conference, Madison, Wisconsin; Midwest Macroeconomics Conference, Nashville, Tennessee

2017: Midwest Econometrics Group (MEG) conference, College Station, Texas; Invited Seminar presentation at Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Wellington, NZ; International Institute of Forecasters’ 37th International Symposium on Forecasting, Cairns, Australia

2016: Third annual conference of the International Association of Applied Econometrics, Milan, Italy; International Institute of Forecasters’ 36th International Symposium on Forecasting, Santander, Spain; 24th Society of Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, Alabama

2015: Federal Reserve System Committee on Macroeconomics Day-Ahead Workshop on Inflation, Cleveland, OH; International Institute of Forecasters’ 35th International Symposium on Forecasting, Riverside, California; Eastern Economics Association 41st Annual Conference, NY

2014: Interagency (FDIC, OCC, and Philadelphia Fed) Risk Quantification Forum, Washington D.C.; Financial Engineering and Banking Society (FEBS), Surrey, UK

Conference and Seminar Discussions

2023:  “Pandemic Priors," by Danilo Cascildi-Garcia (Federal Reserve Board). Federal Reserve System Econometrics Annual Meeting.  

2023: “A Simple Correction for Misspecification in Trend-Cycle Decompositions with an Application to Estimating R* ,” by James Morley (University of Sydney), Trung Duc Tran (University of Sydney), and Benjamin Wong (Monash University). Virtual Time Series Seminar

2019: “Nominal GDP Targeting for a Speedier Economic Recovery,” by David Eagle (Eastern Washington University). Western Economic Association 94th Conference, San Francisco, CA 

2015: “The State Dependent Effects of Monetary Policy on Asset Prices: Risk Premium and Bubbles,” by Cheng Zhou (Texas A&M). Eastern Economic Association 41st Conference, NY  


Teaching  Experience

Guest Lecture: Federal Reserve and Monetary Policy, Executive MBA Class, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, December 2018  

Guest Lecture: Federal Reserve and Monetary Policy, Undergraduate Money and Banking, Kent State University,  April 2019   

Tools I helped develop

Nowcasts for the US Inflation (CPI and PCE). Daily nowcast estimates available here

Prescriptions from Seven Simple Monetary Policy Rules. Click here

Simulation based Rent or Buy Calculator. Should you Rent or Buy? Click here   


Professional Activities

Referee Services

Affiliations

 Other


Computing Skills

Software Languages: C/C++, Prolog, UNIX, SQL, Macromedia ColdFusion, Java Server Pages (JSP), Perl, PHP, XML, JavaScripting  

Econometric/Statistical Packages: SAS, STATA, RATS, EVIEWS, MATLAB (proficient), Gauss, R, Python; and Dynare


Economic Research Tools/DATA: Bloomberg, Haver Analytics, Current Population Survey Utilities (Unicon), Census, Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), ArcGIS; Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS); Confidential Supervisory CAMELS data; COMPUSTAT


Personal

Citizenship: USA, Pakistan

Languages: Urdu (native), English (fluent), Arabic (read and write), Hindi (speak fluently)


References

Barry Boehm (Email: boehm@usc.edu Phone: (213) 740-8163)
 Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, University of Southern California, US

Todd Clark (Email: todd.clark@clev.frb.org Phone: (216) 579-2015)
 Senior Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, US

Edward Knotek II (Email: Edward.knotek@clev.frb.org Phone: (216) 579-2180)
 Research Director and Senior Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, US

Gary Koop (Email: gary.koop@strath.ac.uk)
 Professor, Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

Vasilios Kosteas (Email: b.kosteas@csuohio.edu Phone: (216) 687-4526)
 Chair and Professor, Department of Economics, Cleveland State University, US

Peter Rupert (Email: rupert@econ.ucsb.edu Phone: (805) 893-3569)
 Professor, Economics department University of California Santa Barbara, US

Ellis Tallman (Email: Ellis.Tallman@clev.frb.org  Phone: (440) 775-8592)
 Executive Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, US