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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

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

Aug 30
Aug 30 The Hand-Stitched Nation, Part I

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

For the next few articles, beginning with this one, I want to see if I can write a series of fictional short stories that illustrate different views of economic development. This is Part I.

Aug 2
Aug 2 Fire over Flash: Realities of High-Income Nation Aspirations

Nicholas Khaw
Economic Growth, Economics, Exports & Imports, History, Policy

Does it really matter if Malaysia — or any developing country — hits some arbitrary threshold of “high-income”? Or is it more important that we maintain steady, sustainable economic growth and economic development?

Jun 28
Jun 28 Being the Most Ready: A Diffusion-First Approach to Technology Policy

Nicholas Khaw
Economic Growth, Innovation, Policy, Technology

It is just that, for a middle power such as Malaysia, we may get far more bang for our buck by focusing on how well we diffuse technology broadly, as opposed to how well we invent the next big thing

Jun 7
Jun 7 Realistic Science Fiction Scenarios and the Questions They Hold for Society

Nicholas Khaw
Reflections, Technology, Innovation, Climate

Much of the foundation of hard science fiction is effectively taking our reality today and asking, “If this one thing were different, how would the world look?”

Apr 26
Apr 26 Jurassic World and a Transdisciplinary Approach to the Future of Global Trade and Finance

Nicholas Khaw
Capitalism, Democracy, Economics, Dinosaurs, Politics, Taxes, U.S.A.

We need to reckon with power dynamics and decades of cultural evolution which led us to the “equilibrium” in which we find ourselves today. But there is hope, of course, by being adaptive and open in our paradigms of the world

Mar 29
Mar 29 Taking Inspiration from Bacterium: The Devolution of Power

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

But the point of the devolution of power is to ultimately build a more extremophile political economy that can then serve to ensure a more resilient Malaysia amid greater volatility globally

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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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