Biography and Interests

Rand Ghayad brings more than 12 years of experience as an economist, holding positions in federal government, consulting, international organizations, and academia. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at Harvard University and an economist with the International Monetary Fund. Prior to his current role, Ghayad was an economic expert with The Brattle Group. At Brattle, he provided economic advice to the U.S. government, Law firms and multinational corporations on a wide range of macroeconomic and business issues, including investment reform, debt sustainability, white collar crimes, and financial fraud. Ghayad began his career at the Brookings Institution working on unemployment and labor market reforms. He was also a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank for several years.

Rand is the author of "The Jobless Trap" , a manuscript cited in hundreds of journals and media articles, books, conferences and congressional testimonies by Nobel Prize winners, academics, policymakers. 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 anti-discrimination laws enacted at the State level to protect job seekers against unemployment discrimination, including New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.

Rand Ghayad served as a Visiting Scholar in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a Consultant for the Brookings Institution in D.C. and the International Labor Organization in Geneva. He was also a research advisor at the Center for Career Transitions at MIT.

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