Ali has previously worked as the Chief Economist and Research Advisor at the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) - the central bank, bringing to the job 15 years of managerial, research, international collaborations as well as policy negotiation experiences. He grew up in France and graduated from Kingston University (London) in 1996 with a first-class honors degree in Economics with Politics and Languages with a distinction in spoken French, and was also awarded the Jonathan Crompton Memorial Prize.
He received MSc and PhD in Macroeconomics from Birkbeck College, University of London, 1997 and 2001. He has taught various courses at Birkbeck 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. He left Surrey as a Senior Lecturer in Economics and the Examinations Officer. Following a hiring campaign in the renowned weekly ‘The Economist,’ he was appointed as the head of the research department of SBP in 2008. He served as the director for SBP’s research and monetary-policy departments during 2008-2018 before being elevated as an Executive Director and the Research Advisor.
In 2016 he was also appointed as an international research associate by the London School of Economics. He has been a visiting scholar to the University of Warwick, University of Edinburgh and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has published work in reputable economics and finance journals such the Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial intermediation, Journal of Development Economics, Oxford Economics Paper, Economics Letters, Journal of Economics Dynamics and Control, Journal of Macroeconomics, Applied Economics and Economic Modelling.
He has also won international awards on his academic pieces. His research has been presented in prestigious conferences such as the Royal Economic Society (UK), the American Economic Association (US), the Financial Management Association (US), International Growth Center (IGC): multiple Growth-Week and the Harvard Management Conference in DC. He has been the recipient of numerous research-funding awards from Oxford University (UK), IGC (UK) and Centre for Economic Policy Research (UK).
His current areas of interest are the study developing economy frictions of formal and informal labour, product and credit markets, and economic growth at the firm level. He has led the effort to measure inflation expectations, consumer confidence and policy uncertainty to facilitate monetary policy decisions in Pakistan.
His latest research on firms to understand maximization of economic growth has resulted in the introduction of the study of management and organization practices of the manufacturing sector in Pakistan.
Finally, he is currently working on exploring new ideas in agriculture finance and banking-intermediation weaknesses in general with the help of latest tools including randomized-controlled trials. In the realms of policymaking for developing countries he desires to provide an enhanced model-based structure for policy discussions, to improve accessibility of academic work to policymakers and create a healthy academic environment for upcoming economists.
- Research Fellow: The Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
- Choudhary M. A. and Jain, Anil (2022), Finance and Inequality: The Distributional Impacts of Bank Credit Rationing, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Vol 52.
- Choudhary, M. A. and Limodio Nicola (2022), Deposit Volatility and Long-Term Investment: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Pakistan, Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 89(3), pp 1287-1313. (Best Paper in Islamic Banking and Finance Research Conference 2017)
- Choudhary, M.A. and Jain, Anil (2021), Corporate stress and bank nonperforming loans: Evidence from Pakistan, Journal of Banking and Finance, Vol 133.
- Choudhary, M. A., and Anil Jain (2020), How Public Information Affects Asymmetrically Informed Lenders: Evidence from a Credit Registry Reform, Journal of Development Economics, Vol 143.
- Choudhary, M. A., Vasco Gabriel and Neil Rickman (2020), Individual Incentives and Workers’ Contracts: Evidence from a field Experiment, Oxford Economic Papers, Vol 73(1), pp 248-272.