My career portfolio spans both managerial and technical roles in empirical research in economics and vaccine epidemiology, data science projects, as well as policy advocacy and implementation, including at the highest level of decision-making (e.g., ministerial-level).
At present, I am economist at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary and Financial Research (HKIMR), tasked to conduct cutting-edge economic research, as well as thought leadership on current issues relevant to senior financial sector leaders. Previously, I was at the Central Bank of Malaysia (BNM) between 2018-24, where my last position was senior economist at the Data, Analytics and Research unit, of which I was a founding member. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was seconded to the Ministry of Health (MoH) and then the National Institutes of Health Malaysia (NIH) in 2021-22 to lead and manage various data science projects, as well as vaccine effectiveness research to assist high-level pandemic control decisions. In 2023, I provided economic modelling advisory to various workstreams in the Advisory Committee to the Finance Minister (ACFIN). In Q4 2023, I was visiting economist at the Bank for International Settlements.
Research Papers: Economics
A pseudo-panel analysis of marginal propensity to consume from transfers along the income distribution in Malaysia. Bank Negara Malaysia Working Paper WP1/2024. 2024.
https://www.bnm.gov.my/documents/20124/826852/suah-2024-marginalpropensities.pdf
The 'plucking' model of the unemployment rate floor: Cross-country estimates and empirics. Bank for International Settlements Working Paper 1159. 2024. www.bis.org/publ/work1159.htm
An Empirical Take on the 'Plucking' Model. Bank Negara Malaysia Working Paper WP3/2023. 2023. www.bnm.gov.my/documents/20124/826852/suah-2023-bnmwp323.pdf
Impact of 2021 Floods on Spending: An Event Study Using Daily State-Level Card Transactions and Mobility Data. Bank Negara Malaysia Working Paper WP2/2023. 2023. www.bnm.gov.my/documents/20124/826852/suah-2023-bnmwp223.pdf
An Application of the Forecast-Based Interrupted Time Series Methodology to Evaluate Policy Impact Using Daily Data: The Impact of COVID-19 Cash Handouts on Daily Spending. Bank Negara Malaysia Working Paper WP1/2023. 2023. www.bnm.gov.my/documents/20124/826852/suah-2023-bnmwp123.pdf
Lives and Livelihood, Not Quite a Trade-Off: A Cross-Country Analysis of the Short-Term Impact of COVID-19 Mortality on Real GDP. medRxiv. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.02.13.23285835
Impact of uncertainty and exchange rate shocks: Theory and global empirics. Journal of Asian Economics. 2022 Oct 1;82:101510. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2022.101510
Cash, and "Drops": Boosting Vaccine Registrations. MPRA Working Paper. 2021. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/110912/1/MPRA_paper_110912.pdf
Veiled Expectations: The Heterogeneous Impact of Exchange Rate Shocks at the Sectoral-Level. MPRA Working Paper. 2020. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/109086/1/MPRA_paper_109086.pdf
Crises and Policy: COVID-19 Truly is Different. Bank Negara Malaysia 1Q 2020 Quarterly Economic Bulletin. 2020. https://www.bnm.gov.my/documents/20124/1067364/p2ba1.pdf
Research Papers: Epidemiology
Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines among children 6-11 years against hospitalization during Omicron predominance in Malaysia. Scientific Reports. 2024. 14, 5690. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55899-5
(Co-authored with Vivek Jason Jayaraj, Masliyana Husin, Peter Seah Keng Tok, Azahadi Omar, Sanjay Rampal, and Sheamini Sivasampu)
How Important Are Study Designs? A Simulation Assessment of Vaccine Effectiveness Estimation Bias with Time-Varying Vaccine Coverage, and Heterogeneous Testing and Baseline Attack Rates. medRxiv 2022.08.25.22279235. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.25.22279235
(Lead author; Coauthored with Naor Bar-Zeev, and Maria Deloria Knoll)
Real-world effectiveness of homologous and heterologous BNT162b2, CoronaVac, and AZD1222 booster vaccination against Delta and Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infection. Emerging microbes & infections. 2022 Dec 31;11(1):1343-5. https://doi.org/10.1080/22221751.2022.2072773
(Lead author; Coauthored with Boon Hwa Tng, Peter Seah Keng Tok, Masliyana Husin, Thevesh Thevananthan, Kalaiarasu M Peariasamy, and Sheamini Sivasampu)
SARS-CoV-2 in Malaysia: A surge of reinfection during the predominantly Omicron period. The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific. 2022;26:100572. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanwpc.2022.100572
(Coauthored with Su Lan Yang, Hoon Shien Teh, Masliyana Husin, and Wen Yea Hwong)
Expert review on global real-world vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2. Expert Review of Vaccines. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/14760584.2022.2092472
(Coauthored with Sunate Chuenkitmongkol, Rontgene Solante, Erlina Burhan, Suwat Chariyalertsak, Nan-Chang Chiu, Dung Do-Van, Masliyana Husin, Kao-Pin Hwang, Sasisopin Kiertiburanakul, Prasad S. Kulkarni, Ping-Ing Lee, Rommel Crisenio Lobo, Cao Huu Nghia, Anna Ong-Lim, Sheamini Sivasampu, Peter Seah Keng Tok, Guy Thwaites, and the SEA Vaccine Effectiveness Expert Working Group)
Real-world effectiveness of BNT162b2 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infection among adolescents (12 to 17-year-olds) in Malaysia. International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2022 Aug 1;121:55-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2022.04.053
(Coauthored with Masliyana Husin, Peter Seah Keng Tok, Thevesh Thevananthan, Boon Hwa Tng, Kalaiarasu M Peariasamy, and Sheamini Sivasampu)
Waning COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness for BNT162b2 and CoronaVac in Malaysia: an observational study. International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2022 Jun 1;119:69-76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2022.03.028
(Joint-lead author; Coauthored with Masliyana Husin, Peter Seah Keng Tok, Boon Hwa Tng, Thevesh Thevananthan, Ee Vien Low, Maheshwara Rao Appannan, Faizah Muhamad Zin, Shahanizan Mohd Zin, Hazlina Yahaya, Kalaiarasu M Peariasamy, and Sheamini Sivasampu)
PICK-ing Malaysia's epidemic apart: effectiveness of a diverse COVID-19 vaccine portfolio. Vaccines. 2021 Nov 24;9(12):1381. https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9121381
(Lead author; Coauthored with Peter Seah Keng Tok, Su Miin Ong, Masliyana Husin, Boon Hwa Tng, Sheamini Sivasampu, Thevesh Thevananthan, Maheshwara Rao Appannan, Faizah Muhamad Zin, Shahanizan Mohd Zin, Hazlina Yahaya, Norhayati Rusli, Mohd Fikri Ujang, Hishamshah Mohd Ibrahim, Noor Hisham Abdullah, and Kalaiarasu M Peariasamy)
Assessment of Heterologous and Homologous Boosting With Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine at 3 Months Compared With Homologous Boosting of BNT162b2 at 6 Months. JAMA Network Open. 2022 Aug 1;5(8):e2226046-. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.26046
(Coauthored with Ee Vien Low, Peter Seah Keng Tok, Masliyana Husin, Boon Hwa Tng, Thevesh Thevananthan, Maheshwara Rao Appannan, Hazlina Yahaya, Faizah Muhamad Zin, Shahanizan Mohd Zin, Sheamini Sivasampu, and Kalaiarasu M Peariasamy)
Python Packages
paneleventstudy
Implements the panel (and single entity) event study models, covering the naive two-way fixed effects implementation, and the interaction-weighted implementation from Sun and Abraham (2021).
PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/paneleventstudy
GitHub: https://github.com/suahjl/paneleventstudy
localprojections
Implements the local projections models for single entity time series, and panel / longitudinal data settings, due to Jorda (2005).
PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/localprojections
GitHub: https://github.com/suahjl/localprojections