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About Nick: i am an economist based in malaysia. I write about ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND POLITICAL ECONOMY, while sneaking in a pop culture reference or two.

Nicholas Khaw

Aug 29
Aug 29 When Archetypes Become Millstones: Changing My Priors

Nicholas Khaw
Reflections, Policy, Malaysia, Exports & Imports, Economic Growth

evolving our mental models to fit evolving times does not seem like a bad idea, lest we fall into the trap — or habit — of what Le Guin describes as “what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think”.

Aug 8
Aug 8 The World Cup and the World: 2026 Edition

Nicholas Khaw
Football, Policy, Reflections

Finally, the best thing about the World Cup — at least to me — is less about the football itself, and more about how the citizens of different countries interact with their football team and, more importantly, with one another in the most heartwarming of ways

Jun 27
Jun 27 Building National Resilience through a Portfolio of Worldviews

Nicholas Khaw
Capitalism, Democracy, Economics, Justice, Policy, Reflections

Remember that “evolution is cleverer than you are”. We build resilience not by doubling down on one or two particular worldviews but by trying out different theories of change in different policies

May 30
May 30 A ‘Worldview’ Portfolio Approach to National Resilience

Nicholas Khaw
Fiction, Policy, Politics, Reflections

There are many worldviews to public policy; not every one is equally true. But what if some are more right than others, and what if we happen to be more wrong than right in our choice of worldviews? The argument for a portfolio of worldviews or theories of change is compelling.

May 16
May 16 Simple Choices and a Cyberpunk Future

Nicholas Khaw
Cyberpunk, Technology, Wealth Inequality, Politics

How does a cyberpunk world come about? The path towards such a future is shaped less by overtly bad choices than by repeatedly defaulting to the simpler one.

Mar 28
Mar 28 What Not to Do in a Crisis

Nicholas Khaw
Economics, Malaysia, Policy, Politics

the best thing we can do is take opportunities from this crisis. But even with that in mind, recognise that there are still plenty of things we should not do.

Feb 28
Feb 28 What the NBA can Teach Policy about Competitive Markets

Nicholas Khaw
Capitalism, Basketball, Economics, Policy

What we should focus on is not policy that is interventionist or otherwise, for the sake of it, but rather policy that engineers fair, competitive arenas for firms to succeed or fail.

Jan 31
Jan 31 Standard Oil, Big Tech and Early Sniffs of Increased Regulation

Nicholas Khaw
Capitalism, History, U.S.A., Trust

It is difficult to imagine a more natural target for the state subordination of private power than American Big Tech, particularly with populist politics dominating the day.

Jan 3
Jan 3 My Wish List for an 'Expensive' Political Economy

Nicholas Khaw
Capitalism, Economic Growth, Economics, Policy, Politics

Naturally, it is not easy to translate notions of “transcendence” to the political economy, but these are examples, I think, that I would like to see that demonstrate a growing maturity in our political economy. That, in and of itself, is pretty “expensive”.

Dec 6
Dec 6 Development Strategy Trade-offs from My Experiment with Fictional Op-Eds

Nicholas Khaw
Capitalism, Democracy, Economic Growth, Economics, Exports & Imports, Policy, Politics, Fiction

Fiction writing is difficult. Figuring out dialogue, making characters seem relatively believable, doing more “showing” instead of “telling”, trying to be more descriptive of scenes; I have all the respect in the world for writers of fiction.

Nov 1
Nov 1 The Hand-Stitched Nation, Finale

Nicholas Khaw
Capitalism, Democracy, Economic Growth, Fiction, Politics

This is Part 3, the final part in a series of fictional articles that I started two months ago (September 2025) in The Edge

Oct 11
Oct 11 The Hand-Stitched Nation, Part 2

Nicholas Khaw
Capitalism, Economic Growth, Fiction, Policy

This is Part 2 in a series of fictional articles that I started in September 2025 in The Edge

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Hi, I'm Nick. My research interests and intellectual passions are in the the political economy of economic development particularly related to the long term persistence of historical events and cultural/institutional co-evolutionary factors on economic and public policy outcomes today.

I serve as an economist in Khazanah Nasional, Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, where I am Head of Research and Co-Head of Private Markets, Investments. My work covers Investments research, private markets investing (direct and indirect), Dana Impak, Khazanah’s knowledge management and Khazanah’s public policy engagement. I am also on the Boards of UEM Group, Asia Pacitic University, Khazanah Research Institute and Yayasan Khazanah.

I also write a monthly column for The Edge Malaysia.

 

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