Portfolio · Economics
Your Name,
reading the world as data.
An aspiring economist writing and building models on commodities, international macro, FX, and financial crises — with the occasional detour into the economics of gemstones and the slow death of the British pub.
01 — Economic Journalism
Shorter writing & commentary
Where I test an idea quickly, chase a curiosity, or argue with the data. Faster and looser than the research notes — but the numbers still have to check out.
The Economics of Gemstones
Why a rock with no yield trades like a Veblen good — and what De Beers really taught us about engineering scarcity and a price floor.
Modelling the Decline of the British Pub
A panel of closures since 2000. How much can beer duty, commercial rents, and home substitution actually explain — and what's left over.
The Carry Trade After the End of Easy Money
Selling low-yield currencies to buy high-yield ones used to pay. Does it still, once the whole market knows the trade?
More pieces as I write them. →
02 — Economic Research
Working notes & models
Longer pieces: models, empirics, and the occasional structural estimate. Numbered like a discussion-paper series — a small commitment to keep them honest and finished.
Commodity Super-Cycles: A Reduced-Form Reassessment
Dating the cycles in metals and energy since the 1970s, and stress-testing the China-demand narrative against the price record.
Sudden Stops and the Real Exchange Rate
A small open-economy sketch of capital-flow reversals in emerging markets, and why the adjustment lands on the currency first.
Pricing Tail Risk in FX Options
Reading risk-reversals as a real-time barometer of crisis fear — and asking how early they actually move.
Replace these with your own pieces — link each to a PDF, a post, or a notebook. →
03 — Book Reviews
Reading & reviews
What I'm reading in economic history, finance, and macro — and an honest line on what holds up versus what reads better than it argues.
Manias, Panics, and Crashes — Kindleberger & Aliber
Still the best field guide to why clever, well-informed people lever up at exactly the wrong moment.
This Time Is Different — Reinhart & Rogoff
On the data, the debates, and which of its claims actually survived the spreadsheet controversy.
Lords of Finance — Liaquat Ahamed
Four central bankers and the gold standard — a reminder that policy mistakes have names and faces.
About
A note on what I'm doing here
I'm a final-year Economics undergraduate aiming for graduate study in financial economics. My modules lean quantitative — advanced micro and macro, plus econometrics — and this site is where I turn that toolkit on questions I actually find interesting rather than ones set for me.
The throughline is markets under stress: commodities, international macro, FX, and the anatomy of financial crises. The lighter pieces are a deliberate part of it — finding the economics in gemstones or in pub closures keeps the serious work curious.
- Focus
- Commodities · International macro · FX · Financial crises
- Currently
- Final-year Economics undergraduate
- Toolkit
- Stata · R · Python · LaTeX
- Aiming for
- Graduate study in financial economics