Writings and Projects

Here listed are some of the side writings / projects I have done in the past. Some of them lean more practical, some of them less so. Most of them are written and compiled in LaTeX so they are visually organized.

Thesis

My thesis Neutral Powers, Global Pressures: Supply Shocks, Export Booms, and Monetary Policy Responses to Inflation in Non-Belligerent Economies: 1914-1920 argues that conventional monetary explanations for WWI inflation are fundamentally incomplete, perhaps even misleading. By focusing on non-belligerents (Sweden, US, Japan), I demonstrate that inflation originated primarily from the war's physical disruption of the global economy – supply chain collapse meeting unprecedented export demand. Crucially, this perspective suggests monetary phenomena and even war financing strategies were often endogenous responses to these overriding real constraints, rather than primary causal factors. This endogeneity arose because financial policy could not overcome physical bottlenecks nor suppress war-fueled demand; monetary expansion became a necessary accommodation to the overwhelming reality of disrupted supply chains and the intense pressure to produce and export, rather than an independent inflationary impulse. Analysis of price, trade, and central bank archives reveals neutral economies suffered intense inflation despite lacking direct war finance pressures, showing central banks possessed limited capacity to counteract these global forces, particularly when bound by the gold standard.

Programming

I have built a French vocabulary dictionary documentation tool using Python with the help of Claude to query LLMs and add these queried vocabs into a LaTeX file that can be compiled and displayed for review purposes. Furthermore, it offers exports integration with Anki so you can study them all very easily! If I were to find the time, I can extend language support to be more expansive. It should be relatively straightforward for major languages that are in Latin alphabets.

I have also built this natural language calendar assistant to solve the annoying problem of manually entering calendar events. Using Python and Google Gemini API, I built a desktop app that lets you create calendar events just by typing them naturally (like "Team lunch next Tuesday at noon") or by dropping in photos of event invitations. The app automatically processes everything and creates proper calendar events in all operating systems. I was tired of clicking through multiple fields just to add simple events, and I figured others might find this useful too!

Long & Short: “Swipe Right on Match, Left on Bumble” ($MTCH, $BMBL), May 2024

Short: “Chegg Mate: AI Puts Chegg in Check” ($CHGG), March 2023