Alexander Smith

I am an MSc student in Advanced Economics and Finance at Copenhagen Business School. The MSc blends advanced study in industrial organization, macroeconomics and finance with training in advanced quantitative methods.

I have a BSc in International Business and Politics, also from Copenhagen Business School. My BSc focused chiefly on political economy, economics, corporate finance, political philosophy and political science, and organization and strategy. I took electives in econometrics, machine learning, investment finance, and sustainable finance.

I primarily work quantitatively, using Python, R, and Stata for empirical analysis. I also have experience with qualitative and comparative historical methods.

Academic interests

I am particularly interested in:

  • Socioeconomic network structures emerging from frictions regarding search, switching, transaction costs, contracts, law, cognition, worldviews, and expectations,
  • Network-structural asymmetries producing markets that are 'imperfect' by construction, rather than frictionless in ideal theory but distorted in practice,
  • How networks constrain outside options and information flows, and thereby generate not only rents but also base values, dependencies, and power,
  • Power's effects on policy transmission, inflation, and the possibility space of economic reform,
  • How market power underpins asset values fundamentally, but also reduces financial markets' efficiency and complicates macroprudential policy,
  • Agents suffering power on product or labour markets but also being invested in assets capitalizing the same power,
  • How to distinguish financial markets' recursive responses to themselves from their responses to the wider economy,
  • What all the above implies for structural transitions, particularly decarbonization.

Selected work

Pricing power from expectations and market frictions in U.S. gasoline retailing

Empirically investigating inflation expectations and retailer scarcity, and how the two interact to shape prices and price pass-through asymmetry. This was my undergraduate thesis.

Python notebooks

Research assistance

Research involving socioeconomic network structures and their relation to expertise and received wisdom. Copenhagen Business School.

Background

Before moving formally into economics and finance, I worked across management, operations, client-facing and internal communications, design and editing, and business consulting.

I have fifteen-plus years of experience working with organizations, clients, and multidisciplinary teams.

Miscellanea

Beyond economics, I am interested in complex systems, cognition both biological and artificial, philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and these topics' overlap. I previously participated in the Centre for Philosophy of AI at the University of Copenhagen.

My favourite colour is International Klein Blue. I play average games of chess and go.