Dr. Rand Ghayad

Rand Ghayad is an economist by training with interests in public policy, labor and macroeconomic issues. His primary training at both the graduate and undergraduate levels has been in applied economic theory. He has built on this foundation through extensive fieldwork, comprehensive data collection, and rigorous empirical analysis in order to answer questions that are motivated by and engage with policy.

Rand holds a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from Northeastern University, a Masters of Business Administration (Finance) from Boston University and a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Mathematics from the Lebanese American University. Ghayad’s research addresses a range of empirical and theoretical topics in labor economics with a focus on aggregate unemployment.

Based on his expertise, Ghayad has been invited to prepare a review of the effects of the Great Recession on job displacement and long-term unemployment for the Work and Employment Group at the International Labour Organization in Geneva. He is also a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and has been a consultant to the Brookings Institution on issues related to job vacancy chains and employment growth. Ghayad’s work over the past 4 years has been cited and quoted in 400+ journal and media articles, books, conferences and congressional testimonies by Nobel Prize winners, academics, policymakers, Congressmen, Senators and on numerous occasions by President Barak Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen. His research uncovered new facts, which offered a new explanation for why the unemployment rate did not go back to its normal level since the end of the Great Recession.

As a result of this work, President Obama signed an executive order to ban discrimination against unemployed job seekers who have been out of work for a long time. The findings from his work were also the backbone to several antidiscrimination laws enacted at the State level to protect job seekers against unemployment discrimination, including New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.