Research

My research follows two related lines of inquiry, both centered on the role of institutions in economic outcomes. The first develops theoretical models of monetary competition and state responses to private digital money. The second is empirical, using panel data and time-series methods to examine how institutions, economic freedom, and external financing, including IMF credit and foreign aid, shape growth and entrepreneurship across countries at different income levels.

Current Research

“Co-optation or Ban? A Theory of State Responses to Private Digital Money” (Job Market Paper) - Fouzia Awan, David Agyeman-Duodu. We extend monetary search models to study how government policy interacts with a stablecoin issuer’s willingness to comply with regulation. When a ban on stablecoin use becomes more costly to enforce, the government may prefer to regulate the issuer rather than prohibit the stablecoin. The issuer may accept these requirements, since refusal would lead to a ban. When enforcement becomes even more costly, the government may allow private use of the stablecoin without compliance. In that case, the issuer can avoid compliance costs and may still keep its stablecoin in circulation. It may therefore reject the same requirements it previously accepted, leaving the government to permit unregulated use despite preferring regulation. The threat of a ban can thus secure the issuer’s compliance without the government ever imposing the ban.

"Monetary Technology Competition and the Evolution of the International Medium of Exchange" - Fouzia Awan, David Agyeman-Duodu.

The study asks which monetary technology—fiat currency, cryptocurrency, or central bank digital currency (CBDC)—will dominate international exchange, and why. We develop a dynamic model in which adoption of each technology depends on network size, efficiency, credibility, and other key attributes, while network size itself evolves over time based on relative attractiveness. This feedback creates critical adoption thresholds, above which a technology's growth becomes self-reinforcing. The model derives four possible long-run outcomes—fiat dominance, cryptocurrency dominance, CBDC dominance, or stable coexistence—as equilibrium results, and treats CBDC as a transformation of sovereign money rather than a separate competitor. We derive closed-form conditions showing which parameter region determines the winning technology, along with six formal propositions and testable predictions.

"Macroeconomic Distortions and Economic Growth: Stable Associations, Outcomes and Instruments" - Fouzia Awan, Lawrence Ogbeifun.

Using a global annual panel covering 1961–2022, we ask whether the lower growth associated with extreme policy outcomes (very high inflation, large black market premiums, deeply negative real interest rates, severe currency overvaluation and very low trade shares) is stable across eras and levels of development, and whether it extends to the policy instruments governments set. We find that the relationship is broadly stable: what changed over six decades is how often severe distortions occur, not the negative association that accompanies them. The negative association with extreme inflation is at least as large during the recent resurgence of high inflation as in earlier decades. For policy instruments, results depend on the horizon: tariff ratings are not associated with growth in annual data; however, lower tariffs at the start of a five-year period are associated with faster growth. The estimates are conditional correlations, not causal effects.

"Chinese Development Finance and IMF Lending: Comparing Growth Effects in Belt and Road Countries" - Fouzia Awan.

The study compares the growth and development effects of Chinese development finance and traditional IMF lending in Belt and Road Initiative countries. As borrowing countries increasingly choose between external financing regimes with different conditionality structures, this project asks whether the heterogeneous returns to domestic institutional reform found in my other work are mirrored in the returns to different sources of external finance.

Publications Google Scholar

Awan, F. (2026). IMF Credit and Growth Dynamics: The Moderating Role of Economic Freedom and Governance, International Economics and Economic Policy, Vol. 23 (47), 1-37, Link. @Springer Nature
Awan, F. (2026). Institutional Dynamics, Investment and Entrepreneurship: Impacts Across Income Levels, Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, Link. @Emerald Publishing
Awan, F. (2026). The Freedom Factor: Economic Growth Dynamics in Low and Lower Middle-Income Nations. (forthcoming in Journal of Applied Economics).
Awan, F. (2025). Economic Freedom and Entrepreneurship: Dynamic Modeling, Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy 55 (3): 49–70, Link

Awan, F., and Mustafa, U. (2015). Institutional Governance, Aid, and Economic Growth: A Case of South Asian Countries, European Journal of Business Research, Vol. 15(1), pp. 45-54. Link
Awan, F., and Mustafa, U. (2013). Key Factors Contributing to Agricultural Growth in Pakistan, Journal of Agricultural Economics and Development, Link

Working Papers

Awan, F. (2025). State-Level Policy and Entrepreneurship: Dynamic Modeling (March 25, 2025). Available at SSRN.
Awan, F. (2016). Foreign Direct Investment and Institutional Quality: Empirical Evidence from Countries with Different Income Levels (July 2016) presented at the Asia-Pacific Conference on Economics & Finance (APEF), Singapore.

Conferences and Seminars

Southern Economic Association (SEA) 96th Annual Meeting, Houston, TX Nov. 2026
Association for University Business and Economic Research (AUBER) 79th Annual Conference, Boston, MA. Oct. 2026
C2ER + LMI Institute 66th Annual Conference, Memphis, TN Jun. 2026
Pacific Northwest Regional Economic Conference (PNREC) 60th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR May 2026
American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), Harwood Graduate Colloquium on Monetary Economics, Great Barrington, MA. May 2026
Allied Social Science Associations / American Economic Association (AEA) Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA. Jan. 2026
AUBER 78th Annual Conference, Missoula, MT Oct. 2025
PNREC 59th Annual Conference, Bellingham, WA May 2025
Southern Economic Association (SEA) 94th Annual Meeting, Washington, DC Nov. 2024
AUBER 77th Annual Conference, Boise, ID Oct. 2024
AIER Harwood Graduate Colloquium on Defending Classical Liberalism, Great Barrington, MA May 2024
SEA 93rd Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA Nov. 2023
TechTalks Guest Speaker, TechGirls STEM Education Alumnae Advisory Council Aug. 2023
Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE) 47th Meeting, Cancun, Mexico Apr. 2023
Graduate Economic Freedom Colloquium, Bridwell Institute, Dallas, TX Jun. 2022
Asia-Pacific Conference on Economics & Finance (APEF), Singapore Jul. 2016
International Academy of Business and Economics (IABE) Conference, Orlando, FL, USA Mar. 2015

Applied Research Projects

WSDOT Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Framework Study (2025–2026) – Led the development and validation of an econometric framework to assess disadvantaged business enterprise eligibility.
Peer City Profiles (2026) – Comparative analysis of Bellingham, WA, and peer university-centered cities on affordability, income, and demographic characteristics.
Island County Profiles (2026) – Regional economic and demographic profiles of Camano and Whidbey Islands.
Economic Impact Analysis of the Whatcom Museum (2025) – Quantified the museum’s direct, indirect, and induced contributions to the local and regional economy, including visitor-driven spending.
Washington County Profiles (2024–2026) – Economic and demographic reports for Washington State counties, covering demographics, industry trends, and local characteristics.
OFM Prison Communication (2024) – Comparative market analysis of U.S. prison telecommunications costs across states, for the WA Office of Financial Management.

Research Projects Supervised at UCP

- “The relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in Pakistan”, Ms. Rimsha Imtiaz (2016).
- “Impact of Domestic Financing on the Renewable Energy Consumption”, Mr. Muhammad Hasnain (2016).
- “Urbanization, Economic Growth & Energy Consumption in Pakistan”, Ms. Sehrish Kanwal (2016).
- “Student performance, teacher expectation & Pygmalion effect”, Ms. Ayesha Javed (2016).
- “Effect of Foreign Aid on GDP Growth of Pakistan”, Ms. Ammara Riaz (2015).
- “Impact of Terrorism on FDI Inflows of Pakistan”, Ms. Zainab Yousuf (2015).
- “Foreign aid and fiscal Behavior of Government of Pakistan”, Mr. Adeel Raza (2015).