EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND:
At University of Californina, Santa Cruz (2007 to Present)
I am currently a PhD candidate in
International
Economics at
the
University
of Calfornia, Santa Cruz (UCSC).
The
program at UCSC
is
ranked
as one of the best in
International Finance and International Trade. I expect to graduate
from this program in 2012. My PhD dissertation focuses mainly on
International Trade with some useful contributions to the field of
Financial Economics and International Finance. In my job market
paper, I analyze the influence of a firm's financial leverage, the
percentage of assets of a firm financed by bank loans, on its decision
to participate in a particular international trading activity, namely
its decision to export only, import only or trade two way (export and
import).
Although
International Trade is formally my field of specialization, I have
considerable proficiency in other fields related to International
Economics such as International Finance, Development Economics,
Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. The department follows a rigorous
program, where students are required to take graduate-level courses in
Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and Econometrics during the first year,
followed by a sequence of courses in International Finance and
International Trade. At the end of the first year, students take a
preliminary examination that tests their knowledge of material learned
in the first year, focusing on Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. At
the end of the second year, students are required to take a similar
exam on International Finance and International Trade. (From Summer
2010 onwards, this exam was replaced by a field paper). Students
are also required to write an econometrics paper that analyzes, using
empirics, interesing questions pertaining to the student's selected
field of interest. These courses and projects have helped to not only
develop my proficiency in International Economics, but have also
exposed me to a reservoir of knowledge and tools that can be applied to
solve the various issues facing the economies around the world.
Research at UCSC:
I am honored to conduct my research under the guidance of my
co-advisors,
Joshua
Aizenman and Justin Marion. My other PhD dissertation committee
members are
Flora Bellone and
Jennifer Poole.
I am certain that with a team of such distinguished committee members,
I will have a dissertation that will contribute
substantially towards my field.
My job market paper, titled "
The
Influence of a Firm's Financial Leverage on its International Trading
Activity", focuses
on the relationship between a firm's ability to seek financial leverage
for the purchase of its fixed assets and its decision to participate in
a particular trading activity. Using the
Enterprise Surveys
dataset on Central and Eastern European and Central Asian countries, I
determine that financial leverage (intensive and extensive
margins) influences a firm that imports only or trades only within the
domestic market, inhibiting them from becoming two way traders. On the
other hand, financial leverage (intensive and extensive margins) does
not influence a firm that exports only from becoming a two way trader.
This relationship between a firm's financial leverage and its decision
to participate in a particular international trading activity allows us
to determine a wedge that imperfect capital markets may introduce
into the financing of a firm which is undertaking a particular
international trading activity. A contribution of this paper is that it
augments a model that interacts financial leverage with trading
activities by implementing differences between industries in their
level of external dependence
(the ratio of investments not financed by internal cashflow) and asset tangibility
(the share of net plant, property and equipment in its
total assets). As financial leverage may inhibit a
firm from participating in one activity over another, this could
explain the direction of trade undertaken by firms in economies where
the effects of credit constraints are relatively stronger. Hence, in
the light of the recent global financial crisis, this raises
interesting questions regarding the microeconomic as well as the
macroeconomic impact of the fall in credit availability within several
economies.
After
controlling for various firm-level characteristics, such as
productivity, capacity utilization, employee characteristics such as
firm size, skill intensity and percentage of employees with university
degrees, it is determined that investments in complementary
knowledge-intensive assets or intangibles by firms that import only
such as percentage of employees with university degrees is making
firms borrow from banks to purchase their fixed
assets.
Although
an instrumental variable estimation is conducted that reveals similar
results as the probit estimations,
the
sample is also split into subsamples as per the industry-level degree
of external dependence and asset
tangibility in order to introduce exogenous variation into the
estimations (firm-level data vs industry-level variation borrowed from
US data
(outside the sample of countries)). I determine that intensity of
financial leverage influences firms that import only in industries that
are financially vulnerable or externally dependent, while the presence
of firms within different subsamples of asset tangibility (above
and below the median) does not alter
the influence of the intensity of financial leverage. This indicates
that such firms could be borrowing from banks to finance the purchase
of fixed assets in industries where the dependence on external funds
are high in order to invest their internal funds in complementary
assets. As high tangibility may reduce the survival rate of a firm due
to the
amount of assets that can be seized as collateral by the investors and
low tangibility would imply higher interest rates on borrowing due to
lack of collateralizable assets, importers only can be constrained by
their
financial leverage within either industries
as their preference to
borrow to finance their purchases of fixed assets reduces the
probability of becoming a two-way trader.
Future
Research Intent:
My
job market paper is raising some interesting questions regarding the
relationship between investments by firms in intangible assets, such as
the sunk and fixed costs associated to its international trading
activities, and its
internal and external finances. I would like to further explore this
question given different
samples of countries, for example Asia or Latin America and
developing and emerging vs developed markets, to understand the pattern
in more detail. Furthermore, policy implications of government
instruments such as tariffs, subsidies and export promotions can be
studied by relating it to the impact of the varying degrees of
financial
leverage of a firm on its international trading activities within
industries exhibiting different levels of external dependence and asset
tangibility.
At Pennsylvania State University, University Park (2004 to
2007)
I obtained my Bachelor's degree from
Pennsylvania
State University in
Spring 2007. I majored in
Economics and
minored in Mathematics and Business in Liberal Studies. At Penn State,
I was admitted to the highly prestigious
Schreyer
Honors College .
The Honors College provides students with greater interaction with
faculty members as enrollment size in classes is kept small. It further
provides opportunities to write an undergraduate honors thesis.
Along with the Schreyer Honors College, I was also enrolled
into
the
Honors Program offered
by the Economics Department at Penn State. Here, I was able to work
under the guidance of my thesis supervisor,
David
Shapiro and
my thesis advisor
Bee-Yan Roberts.
David Shapiro is a Professor of Economics, Demography and Womens'
Studies and Bee-Yan Roberts is a Professor of Economics and Asian
Studies at Penn State. With their help, I wrote my thesis titled "
South Asia's Population
Paradox", which won the Edward C. Budd Award for the best
honors thesis in the Economics Department in Spring 2006.
Pre-2003 Educational Experience:
Born in
Karachi,
Pakistan, I
attended
Karachi Grammar School from
Grade III till the completion of my GCE O and A Levels. In 2001, I
graduated from high school and enrolled in one of the most prestigious
private universities in Pakistan,
Lahore
University of Management Sciences (LUMS).
In Fall 2003, I decided to transfer to Pennsylvania State University,
in order to undertake the experience of pursuing an undergraduate
degree in the United States. My motivation was strong, as both my
father and my brother have studied at renowned institutions in the US.
In Spring 2004, I restarted my undergraduate career at Penn State,
which itself was a life-changing experience. Here, I had the
opportunity to enroll in the Honors College and work as a research
assistant to David Shapiro. My experience with Economics at Penn State
created the passion and the desire to continue the pursuit of my knowledge in the
subject matter, and hence the PhD in International Economics.
In
tenth grade in high school, I took an Economics course as an elective
for the O Level examinations. Although, I did take Economics and other
business-related courses in A-Levels, I started my undergraduate degree
with the intention of majoring in Computer Science. As my passion for
Economics remained strong, I enrolled in some introductory level
courses on Economics and soon realized that my interest in Economics
was far greater. Thus, I decided to major in Economics.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
I started my teaching experience in Spring 2005 as a Supplemental
Instruction Leader for the
University Learning Centre (now
known as Penn State Learning) at Penn State for the course, Principles
of Microeconomics. My role was to lead study groups, discuss homework
assignments and prepare students for examinations. In Fall 2006, I was
assigned as the teaching assistant for Development Economics taught by
Bee-Yan Roberts. My assignment included conducting TA sections with the
purpose of helping them through homework assignments and preparing for
the exams. As an undergraduate, this experience developed my confidence
and my ability to teach and help my fellow undergraduates. Later, as a
graduate student at UCSC, I have been able to incorporate the
experience I learned as a Supplemental Instruction Leader and an
undergraduate TA into my teaching.
At UCSC, I have been a
teaching assistant for Intermediate Microeconomics, Intermediate
Macroeconomics, Managerial Economics, and International Trade. Being a
graduate student, the responsibilities have
increased substantially from the time I was an undergraduate teaching
assistant at Penn State. My assignment requires to conduct discussion
sections, grade exams and homeworks, and provide an up-to-date grade
sheet to the instructor. As a teaching assistant, I have gained
tremendous self-confidence and self-belief whenever I am able to
explain and answer adequately to the problems and questions raised by
the students.
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE:
During Summer 2008 and Summer 2009, I worked as a research assistant
for Dan Friedman at the
Learning
and Experimental Economics Project (LEEPS)
Lab. One of my accomplishments during this period was to setup the page
on the
Monty Hall Problem,
which is now an excellent repository on one of the most controversial
and heavily debated mathematical puzzles made famous by Monty Hall on
his once popular TV show, Lets Make a Deal.
At
Penn State, I received the Bates White Research Experience for
Undergraduate scholarship and was provided an opportunity to work with
David Shapiro. As his research assistant, I collected data on fertility
rates, primary and secondary school enrollment and other indicators for
certain sub-Saharan African countries. I compiled the data on the
various indicators to analyze the patterns of fertility rates in
sub-Saharan African countries. My work contributed towards a paper,
titled "
Fertility Transition in
Sub-Saharan Africa: Falling and Stalling".
EXTRACURRICULAR:
At UCSC, I am a graduate student representative for the Economics
Department at the
Graduate Student Association.
Furthermore, I was also a graduate student representative at the
Student Fee Advisory
Committee from
Fall 2009 to Spring 2011. The student fee contributes towards the
provision of various
non-educational facilities to undergraduate and graduate students on
campus. The primary purpose of the committee is to make
funding
recommendation to the Chancellor and Executive Vice-Chancellor.
As
I believe experience should be dynamic with time, increasing with every
opportunity provided, I will add more detail as my experience grows.