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Hello! My name is Michael Wooley. I am (as of January 2018) the senior economist at Grant Thornton. My current interests are in programming (broadly conceived), numerical problems, and ui design. However, I am always up for learning about something new. In a previous life I was an academic economist working on problems in macro, labor, and public economics.

⊕  wm.wooley@gmail.com
 GitHub
 LinkedIn Below you will find some links to my papers and projects. Please feel free to reach out to learn more.

Here is my cv.

Projects

• yapij. A lightweight python interpreter for Electron apps.
  • A single-process, multi-thread application that requires substantially less memory to run than Jupyter-Lab (20-40MB of ram compared to >100MB over several processes).
  • Built-in magics to organize workspaces, handling of common python types (e.g. pandas dataframes) for easy use in node environment, ping-pong heartbeats.
  • Besides node and python: Communication with ∅MQ, packing with MessagePack.
• Understanding Busines Expectations. (demo site) Framework for eliciting subjective probability distributions in a survey context.
  • Provides new tool to ask questions regarding expectations/beliefs à la Manski [2005].
  • Converts user drawing of curve into proper (but exact) piecewise-linear distribution. Realtime computation of summary statistics means that users know what their edits imply for, e.g., percentiles, mean, variance, etc.
  • Set of questions to be explored in this context is large. The proposal section of the demo site discusses a few possible applications.
  • Main tools: react, D3.js, redux, react-router.
• GT Macro Modeling Framework. Desktop app for modeling, forecasting, and viewing macroeconomic data.
  • Intuitive UI for use by non-programmers: model, variable, and data management; visualization of data, forecast diagnostics, forecasts.
  • Numerical work (BVAR+Dynamic Factor Models, hierarchical hyperparameter selection, conditional forecasts) in python then connected to electron app via yapij (see above).
  • Main tools: electron, react, python (NumPy, Numba, pandas).
• Shooting Backwards Developed novel solution to non-linear, non-stationary banking crisis model by Kiyotaki and Gertler (2015)
  • Time to solution cut 15x (relative to original paper)
  • Used MATLAB symbolic algebra to demonstrate backwards-in-time solution a quartic polynomial with analytic solution (impossible with pen and paper)
  • Used spline interpolation to infer solution to inner loop.

Selected Papers and Presentations

1. “Fiscal Centralization: Theory and Evidence from the Great Depression”, forthcoming. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. (with Daniele Coen-Pirani) [Supplements]
2. “Labor Market Consequences of Graduating During a Recession: The Case of the Termites”, 2017. [Supplements]
3. “Monetary Policy in an Economy with Production Networks”, 2017. (Northwestern Macro Lunch)
4. “State-Local Centralization During the Great Depression: A Case Study of Ohio”, 2013. [First Prize, 2013 Ossip Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Writing. University of Pittsburgh.]
5. “Pitt and the Worker Rights Consortium: An Argument for Affiliation”, 2013. [On behalf of Pitt #NoSweat Coalition Against Sweatshop Labor]