Dr. Syed Ahsan is currently a Professor Emeritus in the Economics Department at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His doctoral dissertation was judged the best written in Canada in the field of Economics by the Canada Council in the 1974-75 competition.

Prior to joining Concordia, he taught at the University of Western Ontario (now, Western University). He has held visiting professorships at many prestigious universities around the world. During 2005-7, he was the World Bank Resident Advisor at the Central Bank of Bangladesh.

Recently he has been teaching graduate courses in Public Economics & Policy, (2) Poverty & Inequality & (3) International Economics: Theory & Policy. His current areas of research interest are (1) Healthcare Finance, Insurance, Poverty & Vulnerability, (b) Human development, Poverty, Institutions and Growth, and (c) Efficient Fiscal Decentralization. He has published extensively in leading journals of the profession.