I'm currently an Associate Professor at the American University of Beirut, Suliman S. Olayan School of Business. I am a Ph.D. economist with over 15 years of experience in policy, academia, and finance. I spent 11 years as an Economist and Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund, followed by five years in academia, finance, and consulting.
My research is in financial intermediation, with a focus on regulation and the growing role of nonbanks. It points to the benefits of regulation — to how it can address vulnerabilities of the kind that surfaced in the global financial crisis and again in the banking distress of 2023 (e.g., here, here, here). At the same time, it shows that regulation can be overly broad (e.g., here, here), influenced by political momentum (e.g., here, here), with side effects that regulators should be aware of ( here, here).
I am also interested in how advances in large language models can expand the scope of empirical research in this field. My first project in this area (here) intersects with a broader finance and economics literature, with clear applications to financial intermediation that I am currently pursuing.
Email (primary): jihad.dagher [at] gmail.com
AUB Email: jd76 [at] aub.edu.lb