2018 Spring Conference Speaker

Dr. Smith has over 30 years of experience as an economic forecaster. He brings extensive knowledge from working in various sectors of the economy including: retail (Sears Roebuck); manufacturing (Union Carbide); government (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and President’s Council of Economic Advisers); real estate associations (the National Association of REALTORS® and the Society of Industrial and Office REALTORS®) as well as academia (Professor of Finance at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Director of the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Texas-Austin). As Chief Economist at Parsec Financial, Jim provides information on the economic outlook to the firm’s partners and clients. He also writes a subscription-only, monthly economic analysis and publicly available weekly blog for his website (EconForecaster.com). A native of Dallas, Texas, Dr. Smith earned all three of his economics degrees from Southern Methodist University. He is past president and an active member of several economics groups, including the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) and the National Business Economic Issues Council as well as past co-chair of the European Council of Economists. He received the Certified Business Economist ( CBE®) designation from NABE in October 2015. In April 2017, he received his 4th consecutive Crystal Ball Award for outstanding consistency in having “Top 5” forecasts of house price changes from Pulsenomics/Zillow