This graduate dissertation aims to provide evidence for the claim that consumer sentiment is the inverse of economic uncertainty. I use the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey as an external instrument for an exogenous shock to economic uncertainty (measured by the VXO) and find that it is a suitable instrument. Additionally, I model a monetary policy shock using an interacted SVAR model, and compare the results to those expected by Chemical Game Theory. The red impulse response functions to left indicate an uncertainty shock using the VXO, while those in blue to the right use consumer sentiment as a proxy. Notice that the shapes of the curves are relatively similar for the set of endogenous variables.

This graph was taken from my undergrad thesis where I was able to analyze a predictive model for the Tragedy of the Commons. My thesis was built on the emerging field of Chemical Game Theory, in which human decisions are modelled as molecules interacting. Then, through basic chemical engineering principles, I was able to model how people will play the game based on prior dispositions and potential payouts! My role was to create tools to analyze games with more than 2 players. Since the number of calculations grows very quickly, practically I was capped at 10 players, and found a maximum cooperation rate at 4 players.

Earlier this year (2021) I gave myself a challenge to do in my free-time. Predict next month's inflation, and to show how to do it in a dashboard. I wanted to learn how to use Dash, a powerful dashboard building platform in Python, thoughtfully design a dashboard, apply some of the techniques I was learning in my econometrics course using real data, and deploy it. Since I'm critical of my work and always want to make it better, I limited myself to a week to do it. The results weren't too bad! I got within 0.42% for March CPI data. If you want to learn more about forecasting, or just see the prediction in action, check out arimadash.app It's educational and interactive, so maybe you can make a better model mine!

I started this blog as a way to keep track of some of my thoughts around topics pertaining to economics. I wanted a way to keep my writing skills sharp, as well as have the opportunity to share some of my opinions and ideas. I plan to post about once a week, and hope to provide a space to start insightful discussion. Feel free to read, comment, share, or subscribe!

I'm the commissioner of my fantasy basketball league, and so I built this app as a way to faciliate trades throughout the season. Always the topic of fierce debate, whether a trade is 'fair' or not can now be statistically analyzed, and if there is not significant evidence that the averages are unequal (using a two sample t test), the trade may pass. Additionally, the tool may be used to analyze trends and determine which players are performing above or below their rolling means.