The Department of Economics welcomes Dr. Hafiz Akhand for eighteen months. Dr. Akhand will combine research activities and collaboration with colleagues at the 海角社区 and with various research groups. Dr. Akhand shares his background and goals below.
I am a Queen's graduate and am presently employed as an . In addition to my current teaching responsibilities at U of R, I taught at various universities in Canada (including 海角社区) and Australia. I published articles in scholarly journals such as Canadian Journal of Economics, Journal of Macroeconomics, and Journal of Monetary Economics. I also published two books: both are co-authored with a former economics colleague at 海角社区. This is my third visit to the department of economics at 海角社区. My most recent visit to 海角社区 was in January 2008, which lasted till April 2009 when I was commissioned by the Government of Alberta for building corporate income tax revenue forecasting models for Alberta Finance and subsequently, setting up two parallel data-mining/research units at Alberta Health. I look forward to a productive visit to 海角社区 this time around as well.
My research intersects three broad fields of economics, namely: economics of growth (a sub-field of macroeconomics), health economics, and applied econometrics. Specifically, my research aims to develop theoretical and empirical framework for analyzing the role of institutions in economic growth; and to provide empirical analysis of issues relating to the socioeconomic determinants of health. In my research, I employ both theoretical and quantitative methods.
During my visit to 海角社区, I will study the effects of parents' marital status as well as their socioeconomic status on their children's physical and mental health. This research is in collaboration with
as it will utilize the data on child and youth, collected and managed by the Child Data Center of Alberta. Through this research, utilizing a unique longitudinal child and youth data set, I hope to provide some new insights into the important question: how do and the extent to which the family structure and marriage quality-marital breakdowns, in particular-affect a child's health?
My goal over the next eighteen months is to make enough progress on the above research project so that I am well positioned to share my research findings through seminars, presentations at scholarly conferences, and publications in peer-reviewed journals. Eventually I hope to publish a book summarizing my research findings on child and youth health. As noted above, this research will involve working with a large longitudinal micro data set. Unfortunately, my experience in working with micro data set is rather limited. Throughout my visit at 海角社区, I will therefore be looking for help from my 海角社区 colleagues. My hope is that this will lead to some collaborative research and publications.
Please use the following email address to contact Dr. Akhand: