Dr. Parviz Dabir-Alai

Welcome to my website!

Here you will read about the many different aspects of my career.

I am first and foremost an academic economist; however, I retired from my university work just a couple of years ago. In parallel to my work as an academic and especially since retiring, I have built up a career as a consultant. My current focus involves sharing my experiences and my expertise by offering it to both private and public entities in need of that. My past clients have been based in the UK, mainland Europe, the US, the Middle East and elsewhere.

My interest in consulting work started 30 years ago. Since those early days I have built up a significant portfolio of work. And the largest and most notable of the projects I worked on (in terms of time commitment required and the eventual impact) was the work completed for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington DC and the Engineering Institute, at the University of the West Indies. This interdisciplinary project took up two years of my time. Unlike all reference to other work I mention later I am comfortable in mentioning this client by name as the project was publicly funded and as such issues of client confidentiality do not arise.

The work I did for the IADB required me, and others with whom I was involved, to examine the macroeconomic conditions relating to 10 CARICOM countries for which the financing of large infrastructure projects was being considered. This project, referred to at the time as the Caribbean Regional Infrastructure Study Project (or CRISP), was a multi-billion-dollar project financed by the OECD. My work led directly to the pouring of investment commitments into the 10 CARICOM countries. The investments were for a variety of complex infrastructure projects such as port facility expansions, electrification improvement projects, construction of new and improving existing telecommunication facilities, the refitting and expansion of some airport facilities, and so on and so forth.

Since those early days I have been involved with a variety of other projects. The range of work I have been involved with is something I look back on with pride and satisfaction, knowing that I have made a positive impact on the decision making of numerous satisfied clients.

As alluded to earlier and bearing in mind that client confidentiality for every other piece of work I have done is paramount, in what follows I offer only brief summaries, almost in headline form, on a selection of this work.

Working with major international investment banks, I was asked to evaluate consumer spending trends in different sectors and regions of Europe and assess their projection paths. Another project required me to comment on the application of prosperity indices on the formation of social capital measures for a major Middle Eastern entity. The CRIS Project I mentioned earlier involved making assessments of macroeconomic conditions for the provision of additional infrastructure within the Caribbean region, and advising some of the region's largest multilateral lending and aid agencies on this.

I have also advised on creating more effective economic tools for measuring a government department's various activities. In the field of higher education I have been asked to advise on the development of academic programmes at level 7 in the UK and beyond. I have also advised on the marketing and regulatory aspects of supplying alcoholic beverages to certain emerging economies for a major producer of beer products.

Another exciting project led me to advise on the implications for the wider economy of listing, and delisting, of stocks on exchanges within the UK and elsewhere. Amongst other assignments I have also been called upon to advise on demographic shifts and population characteristics, and changes within these and their consequences for future labour markets, for several emerging economies.

As mentioned, the clients I have advised are made up of both private and public sector actors in different parts of world.

Aside from my work as a consultant I have also held senior academic positions in the UK and elsewhere. Starting with the most recent first, I have recently switched to a new role as an Emeritus Professor of Economics at Richmond University in London. Many years ago I worked at Tulane University in New Orleans (USA), and some years later at the University of the West Indies, at their St. Augustine campus (Trinidad & Tobago).

A selection of my other academic involvements include the following:

Visiting Professor at Skidmore College at Saratoga Springs (US); Research Associate at STICERD, LSE (UK); twice a Visiting Professor at the Delhi School of Economics (India). I have also spent a number of weeks at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and shorter visits at the Universities of Western Cape and Pretoria. I have enjoyed spells of university related and consulting work in Belgium, the Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Greece, Italy, elsewhere in India, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Suriname, St. Lucia and Turkey amongst others.

Until a short few years ago I worked with the UK Government's Commonwealth Scholarship Commission for a stint lasting 6 years. My role was to evaluate funding applications from students in commonwealth countries intending to enrol onto doctoral programmes in economics at UK universities.

I feel privileged in that my work, both as an academic and as a consultant, has allowed me to work with extraordinary people. Over the years many of these individuals have become close friends and associates. Their names, and my associations with many of them, are buried amongst material shared on this site.

Further, I am a former Dean of the School of Business & Economics at Richmond University. In that role I led a team of 30+ talented academics on multiple sites. That, plus program monitoring, development and promotion took up the bulk of my time as Dean. As an example of some promotional work I used to share views on what our programs offered. For example, in the following short recruitment clip (see here) I discuss some of my ideas on the value and purpose of pursuing an undergraduate degree.

As important as all of the above, and on a very personal note, I am an obsessive supporter of Arsenal Football Club and hold a season ticket that brings me untold joy, most weeks of the year. Curiously, for some, I also follow Brentford Football Club but from a time long before they climbed into the English Premier League!

To get in touch please use the 'Contact' page on this site. I am also on LinkedIn, BlueSky Social (@ProfPDabir-Alai.bsky.social) and Mastodon (@ProfDabirAlai@mas.to).

Parviz Dabir-Alai, 2020 ©