Dr. F. Ward McCarthy joined Jefferies and Company as a managing director and the chief financial economist in the fixed income division in September, 2009. Ward is responsible for the Jefferies U.S. economic, Federal Reserve, Treasury and fiscal outlook and analysis. He publishes the weekly Jefferies "Economic and Bond Market Insight" and also contributes to the Jefferies "Global Fixed Income Monthly."

Prior to joining Jefferies, Dr. McCarthy spent twenty years at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, a firm he co-founded in 1989. Earlier in his career, Ward was also the chief financial economist and manager of government debt research at Merrill Lynch, and a senior economist, monetary policy advisor and chief of bank studies at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

During a career of more than 25 years, Ward has studied of the dynamics of the relationship between the business cycle, monetary policy and federal debt financing, and their effect on the U.S. government debt market and changes in the yield curve. In 1991, Ward established the well-known Stone & McCarthy Research U.S. Portfolio Manager Survey, which compiles and analyzes changes in investment fund investment holdings.

Dr. McCarthy is a graduate of the Boston Latin School and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received his doctorate in economics from Rutgers University.