T.M. (Tarek) Harchaoui, Dr

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Tarek Harchaoui became a Research Associate at the Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC), affiliated to the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), on December 1, 2010. Harchaoui’s interest is on applied economics broadly understood with a focus on measurement issues and policy-relevant topics.  His actual research agenda is structured along the priorities of the INDICSER initiative and the main mandate of the GGDC. The primary focus of his research is to assess the role of structural differences, market rigidities and measurement methods in the European Union-United States productivity gap. A second line of research is driven by measurement issues ranging from data revisions to enhancements of conventionally defined frameworks with the goal to accurately address the issues at hand. Another avenue of research is to identify and understand some of the structural changes that may have emerged in recent years.

Prior to joining the GGDC, Harchaoui was Deputy Director, Economic Statistics, at Statistics Canada. In this position he was responsible for some high profile programs such as the the Consumer Price Index and the Canadian Productivity Accounts (CPA). Within these programs, he implemented various transformation initiatives such as the integration of the CPA into the Canadian System of National Accounts and its Environment Satellite Account, the implementation of the OECD productivity manual’s recommendations, the redesign of the consumer prices program’s business model with a goal to enhance quality assurance and relevance.  Prior to becoming Deputy Director, he headed the financial sector data gap project, a Statistics Canada’s initiative aimed at revamping the delineation of the financial sector and enhancing its coverage with the initiation of new annual surveys.

Harchaoui represented Statistics Canada in many national and international fora. Between 2007-2010, he was a technical expert at the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on Price Statistics, a United Nation body meant to coordinate international work on price statistics and support the development and the implementation of internationally accepted standards and methods. He coordinated during 2004-2006 the activities of an interdepartmental taskforce on Canada’s public infrastructure, a $1.3 million initiative, designed to deal with various data gaps and to address key research questions on the interplay between public infrastructure and the economy.  As part of ‘Tunisia’s Global Integration’ project, he conducted for the World Bank several missions to Tunisia during 2005-2007.

He authored numerous professional articles in a wide range of topics and published in leading economic journals such as the International Economic Review, The Canadian Public Policy, Energy Economics and acted in 2005 as guest editor of l’Actualité économique for a special issue on the new economy.  Between 1997-2004, he was Vice-President of La Socièté canadienne de sciences économiques. From 2004 to 2010, he was a member of the editorial board of the Review of Income and Wealth. He is a member of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth and holds a PhD. in economics from the University of Montreal.

My Curriculum Vitae