For seven years I was an Economist and then Senior Economist at the IMF Research Department, in the Macro-Financial Division. My work there combined policy work — on financial stability, banking regulation, real estate, and the review of program countries during the euro-area crisis — with academic research.
Bank and financial regulation. I worked on several policy papers and internal reviews on bank capital requirements and financial regulation.
Reviewer for program countries during the Euro crisis. I served as a reviewer for several European countries during the euro-area crisis, including program countries — Latvia, Ireland, Greece, and Spain — providing feedback to country teams on their analysis, discussions, and proposals while also contributing to the analytical work, for example on debt sustainability.
Real estate and housing economics. I maintained and improved the data and empirical work on housing-related matters that were used throughout the IMF, covering commercial and residential real estate markets across 50+ countries.
World Economic Outlook. I also contributed to and consulted on some of the research produced by the World Economic Outlook (WEO) division.
My work focused on the housing market in the U.S. and Canada, which made me familiar with its institutional details. I also worked on other sectors and on financial regulation matters.
Selected related papers:
I spent a year and a half at the IMF Institute (now the Institute for Capacity Development), which focuses on helping countries strengthen their economic policy capacity. A key part of this work involved training officials on the IMF's methods for analyzing economies and simulating policy scenarios, both of which require a solid understanding of national accounts and the interconnections between economic sectors. I delivered these trainings in English, French, and Arabic.
I worked at the IMF's African Department for a year and a half covering Ghana, Togo, and Benin. With the Togo team I specialized in Debt Management. With the Benin team I specialized in matters related to exchange rates. With the Ghana team I helped build a model to explore the impact of the oil windfall on inflation under various scenarios. I also worked alongside other economists on issues related to inflation targeting in emerging countries, and we illustrated our methodology with Ghana's economy.
Selected related papers:
Systemic Risk Institute at Yale University. I was selected to represent the IMF at the inaugural session in 2014 — a two-week workshop for a small group of economists representing regulatory agencies and central banks. The workshop is described in more detail in this WSJ article.
Milken Institute. I was a fellow between 2019 and 2021, where I advised a team of macroeconomists, attending meetings and providing input on various projects. These include papers on ESG ratings, which involved machine learning to process Twitter posts by companies related to their green initiatives, and a paper on growth in Latin America.