Quamrul Ashraf

Quamrul H. Ashraf is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Williams College. His scholarly interests lie in the areas of economic growth and development, economic demography, and macroeconomics. Ashraf’s main research program has been focused on exploring the deeply rooted cultural, institutional, and geographical determinants of economic growth and intersocietal comparative development in the very long run, including the influence on economic development of prehistorically determined intrapopulation diversity and of the biogeographic determinants of the transition to sedentary agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution. His other work has focused on employing simulation-based models of economic growth to quantitatively assess the aggregate implications of economy-wide policy interventions to improve public health or reduce population growth; and applying the methodology of agent-based computational economics to investigate various macroeconomic phenomena, including the real costs of inflation and the role of the banking system in macroeconomic crises. Ashraf holds BA degrees in Economics and Computer Science from Trinity College (CT) and MA and PhD degrees in Economics from Brown University.