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Dr Ali Choudhary

Senior Lecturer in Economics

Qualifications: BA First Class(Kingston University, London), MSc and PhD (Birkbeck College, University of London)

Email:
Phone: Work: 01483 68 6958
Room no: 09 AD 00

Office hours

 

RePEc web page: http://ideas.repec.org/f/pch468.html

Further information

Biography

Ali Choudhary graduated from Kinston University in 1996 with a First Class honours degree in Economics with Politics and Languages with a distinction in spoken French and was also awarded the Jonathan Cromptom Memorial Prize. He received MSc and PhD, both in Economics, from Birkbeck College, University of London 1997 and 2001. He has lectured various courses at Birkbeck as a Part-time teacher during his PhD. He has also served as a consultant to the European Commission and the World Bank before moving to the University of Surrey in 2001.

Research Interests

Ali’s research contributes to three areas in economics: Macroeconomics, Labour Economics (in particular Executive Compensation) and the Economics of Happiness.

The research effort in macroeconomics is divided into three areas. The first relates to sticky prices and their relationship with costly and unloyal customers in the context of the customer-market model of Phelps and Winter (1970). This research has led to two main conclusions: first that costly customer relation can generate countercyclical mark-ups and second that customer-flow uncertainty reduces the importance of market frictions such as information-delays; a hallmark of the customer markets. The second relates to household’s consumption and work habits in the context of a monetary model of Clarida et., al. (1999) and Woodford (2003). This research has led to the finding that in a world of multiple habits people work excessive hours, compared with the social optimum. The excessive ‘workoholicism’ is especially prominent where the consumption habits dominate working habits such as the U.S. The third area relates to an empirical determination of the contractionary effects on employment of technology shocks using the state of art procedures of Basu and Fernald (2002).

The research on executive compensation relates to the conditionality on stock options. This research involves formulating methods to evaluate and examine conditions on executive stock options. This research has led to the finding that there is little switching between the level and the type of conditions on stock options in the U.K. (Departmental Working Paper, 2005). Furthermore, the likelihood of UK executives of meeting conditions is about 50% in 2002 (Departmental Working Paper 11/03). Ali currently holds a Nuffield grant to examine the incentive effects of compensation schmes in developing economies.

Finally, research on happiness is concerned about developing and then testing DSGE type macro models which take into consideration consumption and work norms.

Publications

  • Choudhary, A., Levine, P., McAdam, P., Welz, P. (Forthcoming), Happiness Inertia: Analytics of the Easterlin Paradox, Oxford Economics Papers.
  • Choudhary, A and A., Haider (Forthcoming), Neural Network Models for Inflation Forecasting: An Appraisal, Applied Economics.
  • Choudhary, A. and Levine, P., (2010) 'Risk Averse Firms and Employment Dynamics', Oxford Economics Papers, 62(3), 578-602.
  • Choudhary, A. and Gabriel, V., (2009), 'Is there really a gap between aggregate technology and productivity', Applied Economics, 41(27), 3499-3503.
  • Choudhary, A. and Orszag, M.,  (2008), 'A Cobweb Model with Local Externalities', Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 32, 821-847

View more publications since 2007

Current Working Papers

Teaching

Ali teaches both UG and PG courses namely: Macroeconomics of Economic Growth (EC464), Preliminary Quantitative Methods (EC 670), Computing for Business (EC210) and Industrial Organisation (Not Running in 2007). He chairs the exam-board and is department’s examination officer. He is also department’s sport’s officer.