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working paper · do not cite

Nik Khosravipour

WU Vienna · Students For Liberty Austria

draft of July 2026

Abstract

I study monetary policy, business cycles, and institutional economics at WU Vienna, and coordinate Students For Liberty Austria. This page is the working copy: the questions are open, the margins are where the thinking happens.

the core question

References latest research & writing

  1. The Omniscient Planner 2026, essay. Grant a planner every fact in the world and a machine that never errs. He still cannot choose between steel and aluminium, because the number that choice needs is made by a contest he has abolished.
  2. Speculators and Markets: The Role of Risk-Takers in the Economy 2026, essay. The speculator is the market's most useful villain. He produces nothing you can hold and profits when others panic, which makes him the natural suspect whenever a market breaks. But the risk he is blamed for existed before he arrived, and most of what gets pinned on speculation turns out to be the work of whoever distorted the price he was only reading.
  3. Calibrated to the Headline: The Cost of a Reaction Function No One Can Write Down 2026, research note. In four weeks the market repriced the Federal Reserve's policy path four times, on a hot CPI, a hawkish projection, an energy-driven PCE print, and a payroll miss. News about the economy moves any expected path. The rest of the movement priced something else: how a committee bound by no rule would choose to read that news. Data dependence is the honest name for discretion, and the honesty does not lower its price.
good, extend this

all research · all writing

Current work

1. Economic research

status: ongoing

Monetary policy, institutional economics, and financial markets. Coursework at WU Vienna on one side, my own econometric work — mostly in R — on the other.

2. Students For Liberty Austria

status: active

I run the national network: events with classical-liberal think tanks, and speakers I have brought in from the Cato Institute, George Mason, and the Austrian Economic Center.

3. Writing & commentary

status: developing underway

Notes, essays, and commentary on how economic arrangements play out in the real world — from a single central-bank decision to the shape of a whole market.

be honest, it has started

I'm a sixth-semester economics student at WU Vienna. One question runs through most of my work: how do monetary policy and institutions actually move the economy, and does the data back the story we tell about it? Since 2023 I've also run Students For Liberty Austria, building its network of students and think-tank partners from the ground up.

who is writing

More about me →

Correspondence

I'm looking for research internships and analyst roles — policy institutes, central banks, research shops working on monetary policy or macro. Email is the fastest way to reach me; I read everything and usually reply within a day. Happy to talk about a collaboration or a project, too.

[email protected]

reply within a day or two