Dr Rubayat Chowdhury
Dr Rubayat Chowdhury is a Research Advisor at the Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University. He is a macroeconomist specialising in Pacific economies, international macroeconomics and applied econometrics.
Rubayat’s research examines how foreign income, commodity shocks, global economic shocks and structural geographic constraints shape growth and macroeconomic stability in Pacific Island Countries (PICs), small states, and emerging economies. His current work focuses on the economic uniqueness of PICs, including the roles of aid, sovereign rents and remittances.
Rubayat co-authored GNDI and the uniqueness of the Pacific island economies with Professor Stephen Howes, demonstrating GNDI as a comprehensive measure of economic performance for PICs and documenting the region’s unique reliance on foreign income. His ongoing research extends this work by examining the components and underlying drivers of foreign income across the Pacific.
Rubayat also develops and maintains large cross-country macroeconomic panel datasets used in research and policy analysis. His broader research interests include commodity-price shocks, monetary policy, macroeconomic volatility, international spillovers, exchange-rate adjustment and the sources of business cycles.
Rubayat previously worked as a short-term consultant at the World Bank and held positions at the central banks of Bangladesh and PNG. His professional experience combines academic research with more than 10 years of central banking, policy analysis and applied macroeconomic work.
Rubayat completed his PhD in Economics at ANU in 2025. His thesis, Commodity Shocks, Uncertainty, and Sources of Business Cycles, examined the transmission and macroeconomic consequences of domestic and international shocks. He has taught macroeconomics and other economics courses at the Crawford School of Public Policy and the Research School of Economics and has contributed to student supervision, research mentoring, executive training and major events.
His recent commentary on Pacific growth, global trade shocks and the effects of oil price and supply disruptions in the Pacific include The Pacific growth spurt, GNDI: a new approach to measuring economic performance in the Pacific, and The Pacific and the Iran war.
Research Interest
Pacific growth, commodity and financial markets, spillovers, sources of business cycles, time series modelling, SVAR, GVAR.
Publications
Chowdhury, R. Howes, S. 2025. GNDI and the Pacific, Development Policy Centre Discussion Paper 114, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University, Canberra, https://devpolicy.org/publications/gndi-and-the-pacific/.
Chowdhury, R., 2022. Resource Dependence, Commodity Shocks, and the Role of the Exchange Rate: An Empirical Study of Papua New Guinea (No. 2022-50). Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University, https://crawford.anu.edu.au/cama/content-centre/research/resource-dependence-commodity-shocks-and-role-exchange-rate-empirical.
Chowdhury, R 2018, ‘The effectiveness of monetary policy in Bangladesh: a VAR approach’, Bangladesh Journal of Political Economy, vol. 34, no. 2, http://bea-bd.org/site/articles/75.
Chowdhury, R, Khatun, R & Roy, R 2017, ‘Modeling the consequences of emerging markets slowdown in the aftermath of global financial crisis: A G-Cubed approach’, ASA University Review, vol. 11, no. 2, http://www.asaub.edu.bd/asaubreview/data/v11n2sl4.pdf.
Alam, MM, Chowdhury, R, Khatun, R & Roy, R 2017, ‘A Markov-Switching model of GDP growth in Bangladesh’, Thoughts on Banking and Finance, Bangladesh Bank Training Academy (BBTA) Journal, vol. 6, no. 1, https://www.bb.org.bd/pub/halfyearly/bbta/bbta_journal_v6i1.pdf.
Khatun, R, Roy, R, Chowdhury, R & Hussain, MI 2017, ‘Determinants of bank profitability in Bangladesh’, Thoughts on Banking and Finance, Bangladesh Bank Training Academy (BBTA) Journal, vol. 6, no. 1, https://www.bb.org.bd/pub/halfyearly/bbta/bbta_journal_v6i1.pdf.
Employment history
Research Advisor, Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University, July 2026-present
Research Officer, Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University, June 2025-July 2026
Research Officer (part-time), The Australian National University, June 2023-December 2023, Supervisor: Professor Renée Fry-McKibbin.
Research Officer (casual), The Australian National University, September 2020-February 2023, Supervisor: Professor Renée Fry-McKibbin.
Short-Term Consultant (Economist), World Bank, May 2022-June 2024.
Additional Director (on study leave), Bangladesh Bank (Central Bank of Bangladesh), August 2020-February 2025.
Economist (ODI Fellow), Bank of Papua New Guinea (Central Bank of Papua New Guinea), October 2017-December 2019.
Joint Director (Research), Bangladesh Bank, January 2015-August 2020.
Deputy Director (Research), Bangladesh Bank, October 2011-January 2015.
Assistant Director (Research), Bangladesh Bank, August 2009-October 2011.
Awards and Recognition
Helen Hughes Prize for graduate diploma and master's (2013 and 2014); Australia Awards Leadership Scholarship (2013-2014), ODI Fellowship (2017-2019), Greg Taylor Scholarship (2020-2021), and the Australian Government Research Training Program (AGRTP) Scholarship (2020-2024).
Thesis Title/Topic
Commodity shocks, Uncertainty, and Sources of Business Cycles