Moore School of Business - Moore School - Our Economist at the CIA

Dr. Brian A Gilbey When Dr. Brian A. Gilbey (Ph.D. ’88) checks into hotels outside of Washington, D.C., and shows his ID to get the government rate, the desk clerk usually gives a “palpable gasp,” says Gilbey. In the nation’s capital, on the other hand, the reaction is usually, “ Oh, you and everybody else. Ho hum.”

Gilbey, an intelligence officer and member of the senior analytic service of the Central Intelligence Agency, is not a spy. He is, however, a senior economist who went to work for the CIA in November 1988, just a few months after earning his doctorate in economics at the Moore School. “ I thought I’d try it out for a year or so and then move on,” says the 43-year-old Gilbey. “But I’m still here. I really like my job.”

As a senior economist monitoring global economic issues, Gilbey’s job is to “understand what’s really going on in the world economy and to advise the administration on that.” Using a global econometric model with 2,000 equations to simulate the impact of changes in the economy on the United States and on foreign countries, Gilbey writes a one-page economic memo that is part of the President’s Daily Brief, the classified daily briefing that the U.S. President reads each morning.

Gilbey also writes detailed economic reports when needed and produces 5-to-10-page papers on various economic topics for White House advisors and officials at the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Department of the Treasury.

“I do a lot of the same things that economists at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund do,” he says.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Gilbey’s job got harder. “Everyone was fixated, and rightly so, on terrorism,” he says. “Nobody was very interested in the economy.” But now his job is returning to normal. “The economy is extremely important,” he says. “It determines military preparedness. It determines government policy. It determines whether people are happy or sad.”

In the past year, Gilbey has focused on such things as oil price fluctuations (“Who in the world is affected?”) and the surging economy of China, which the Chinese are attempting to slow. (“What impact does that have on the United States?”)

In 2003, Gilbey packed up his family — wife Melissa and three young sons — to take a two-year sabbatical at Duke University, where he was a visiting professor of economics. Among the courses he taught were Economic Growth and Development Theory, and the Role of Intelligence in National Security Policy.

Last fall, Gilbey returned to the CIA and then to his alma mater to do some preliminary recruiting for the agency. He and a colleague held informational sessions about the CIA for interested Moore graduate and undergraduate students. “We’re trying to tap into some of the best colleges in the country to garner interest in the agency,” he says.

As for the shake-up at the CIA in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, the changes aren’t having much impact on what Gilbey does. The very senior-level people are affected, he says. “The rest of us just do our jobs.”

—Jan Collins

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Brian Gilbey: Our Economist at the CIA