Saudi Economist Appointed Visiting Scholar at Stanford University

Dr. Khalid Alsweilem (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Dr. Khalid Alsweilem (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Saudi Economist Appointed Visiting Scholar at Stanford University

Dr. Khalid Alsweilem (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Dr. Khalid Alsweilem (Asharq Al-Awsat)

The prestigious Stanford University has recently announced appointing a Saudi economist and investment expert as a visiting scholar.

Stanford Center for Sustainable Development and Global Competitiveness (SDGC) and Stanford Long Term Investing (SLTI) said they are pleased to welcome Dr. Khalid Alsweilem, PhD, as a Visiting Scholar to Stanford.

His research focuses on the study of sovereign wealth funds, with a particular focus on Saudi Arabia’s reserve sovereign funds and their links to the real economy, the University wrote on its official website.

His current efforts complement the theoretical work he did at Harvard’s Department of Economics on portfolio theory approach to public finance in Saudi Arabia and its application to his work as Director General of Investment Department and Chief Investment Officer of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) during the past 30 years. SAMA is the Kingdom’s Central Bank.

Dr. Alsweilem has published numerous scholarly pieces focused on the connection between sovereign wealth and the “real economy.”

His most recent book, dubbed “Sovereign Wealth Funds in Resource Economies” was co-authored with Malan Rietveld, Fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, and published in 2018 by Columbia University Press.

The San Francisco-based University is one of the world’s most important universities that have been operating for over a decade. It was credited with technical progress, as it started from its laboratories at the Silicon Valley in the 1960s.

Dr. Alsweilem is a former Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

He was a lead author for three major papers on sovereign funds models and institutions that were published as joint reports by the Belfer Center for Science and International affairs and the Center for International Development at Harvard.

He is currently working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Golub Center for Finance and Policy (GCFP).



World Food Prices Ease Slightly in August

Truckers eat their lunch while blocking a street during a protest against the diesel price increase in Cali, Colombia, on September 5, 2024. (Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / AFP)
Truckers eat their lunch while blocking a street during a protest against the diesel price increase in Cali, Colombia, on September 5, 2024. (Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / AFP)
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World Food Prices Ease Slightly in August

Truckers eat their lunch while blocking a street during a protest against the diesel price increase in Cali, Colombia, on September 5, 2024. (Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / AFP)
Truckers eat their lunch while blocking a street during a protest against the diesel price increase in Cali, Colombia, on September 5, 2024. (Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / AFP)

The United Nations' world food price index eased slightly in August, data released on Friday showed, as lower prices for sugar, meat and cereals more than offset higher dairy and vegetable oil prices.

The price index, compiled by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to track the most globally traded food commodities, slipped to 120.7 points in August from a revised 121 in July, Reuters reported.

The FAO index hit a three-year low in February this year as food prices retreated from a record peak set in March 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The August value was 1.1% lower than its level a year ago and 24.7% below its peak from March 2022.

In a separate report, the FAO lowered its forecast for global cereal production in 2024 by 2.8 million metric tons to 2.851 billion tons, putting it almost on a par with the previous year's output.
The decrease largely reflects reduced prospects for coarse grain crops in the European Union, Mexico and Ukraine, thanks to hot and dry weather conditions.

The forecast for world cereal utilization in 2024/25 was lowered by 4.7 million tons versus July to 2.852 billion tons, reflecting a 0.2% increase from 2023/24.

The agency also cut its forecast for world cereal stocks at the close of seasons in 2025 by 4.5 million tons to 890 million.