Advisor
Dr. Usman W. Chohan is an international economist and academic who was one of the founding Directors of CASS, now serving as Advisor to President CASS on Economic Affairs & National Development. He is among the Top 100 Authors across all subjects & disciplines (out of 1.2 million authors) on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), which is the largest open repository of knowledge in the world. At CASS, he has authored/edited eight books in the past five years, all published with Routledge (see below). In the academic realm, his research has been cited widely, and Dr. Chohan has testified before various authorities based on his technical expertise. He has been published in prestigious journals such as Policy & Society, The International Journal of Public Administration, and Parliamentary Affairs.
Dr. Chohan has a PhD in economics from UNSW Australia, where his doctoral work led to the world’s first multidisciplinary synthesis of independent legislative fiscal institutions, and an MBA from McGill University (Canada), with coursework at MIT-Tsinghua. His previous practitioner experience includes working at the National Bank of Canada and the World Bank. Dr. Chohan has been a speaker at major national conferences such as GSTAR and the Margalla Dialogue. He is also the President of the International Association of Hyperpolyglots (HYPIA), the leading organization worldwide for hyperpolyglotism and whose membership consists of the speakers of six or more languages. He appears frequently on domestic and international television, podcasts, and lecture series in various languages. He is also trained in South Asian musicology and plays the sitar. In addition, Dr. Chohan has maintained an annual reading challenge of 100 books every year since 2011.
List of Books at CASS
Forthcoming books
In his groundbreaking work The Shipwrecked Mind, Mark Lilla attempts to understand the zeal of reactionaries, unable to grapple with the present and lost in a sea of tumultuous ideas. The title resonates on multiple levels with those who have seen a flurry of disquieting events transpire recently, not least in
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Considerable controversy has emerged over the Temporary Economic Refinance Facility (TERF), a pandemic-era stimulus program that was launched under the auspices of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) as a concessionary financing facility for capital investment.
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The salaried class in Pakistan has long borne the brunt of iniquitous taxation. Although not large in terms of sheer numbers per se, their tax effort is far larger than that of many sectors that are either uncovered or under-covered by the ramshackle tax architecture.
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The economy has undergone tremendous upheaval over the past year, and the public has been trampled by the combined forces of inflation, unemployment, and economic stagnation simultaneously.
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Although recent remarks in the Senate standing committee on finance suggest that the government is working towards banning the use of cryptocurrencies in Pakistan, I have argued that the government first needs to offer a sane and reasonable mainstream
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The State Bank of Pakistan Amendment Act (SBPAA) was passed into law in early 2022 with the strong insistence of the IMF. The law was more so a reflection of the IMF’s ideological spin rather than of the local requirements of Pakistan.
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It is difficult to calculate the scope of devastation that the tragic war in Ukraine was wrought upon the beleaguered nation, with the 2022 Russian invasion leading to loss of lives,
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How important is the level of education to the health of society? How important is an educated electorate for a well-functioning polity? The intuitive answer is that the more educated and
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The course of a nation’s life, it may come at a crossroads where difficult decisions must be made that exact weighty concessions from the status quo. Elites must, in such conditions, yield to the wider
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All views and opinions expressed or implied are those of the authors/speakers/internal and external scholars and should not be construed as carrying the official sanction of CASS.