Working papers

25 papers · October 2026

Sovereign Debt & Fixed Income

  1. Working Paper 20 · October 2026 · PDF

    Frontier Sovereign Bond Returns in Dollar Terms: Carry, Currency, and Default Risk

    In dollar terms the frontier carry trade does not survive: Ghana earned -78% and Kyrgyzstan -13% from 2010 to 2024. Starting yield still predicts forward dollar returns at long horizons, but the currency eats half the local carry; rising debt-to-GDP, not IMF programs, is the ruin signal.

  2. Working Paper 19 · October 2026 · PDF

    Bonds and Stocks: Twenty Years of Relative Market Size Across Ten Economies

    Bond markets exceed equity markets in 9 of 10 economies; the US is the sole exception with its ratio falling from 1.22 to 0.89. China's bond market grew 24-fold to $28.7 trillion; equities run 2 to 7 times hotter than bonds everywhere, so the ratio moves on the equity leg.

  3. Working Paper 17 · October 2026 · PDF

    The Price of Safety: Twenty Years of Sovereign Bond Spreads Across Five Regions

    Euro-area spreads never returned to pre-2008 levels: France trades about 80bp over Germany against near zero in 2006, the UK spread more than doubled; Korea and Australia compressed about 200bp as Japanese yields normalized; the largest spikes were episodic and country-specific.

  4. Working Paper 04 · September 2026 · PDF

    How the largest economies fund debt service

    US federal interest rose from 10.9% of revenue in 2020 to 20.3% in 2024; about 93% of 2024 US gross issuance refinanced maturing debt.

  5. Working Paper 03 · September 2026 · PDF

    Sovereign bond markets, 2016–2026

    Major-market 10-year yields rose about 3 points from their 2019–2020 troughs; roughly 80% of 2025 OECD sovereign borrowing refinanced maturing debt.

Banking & Credit

  1. Working Paper 27 · October 2026 · PDF

    Visible Money, Invisible Counterparties: The Financing Ecosystem of the AI Infrastructure Buildout

    From 1,495 primary documents across 29 campuses: of $1,165.00B in uncommenced lease obligations only 3.3% names a counterparty in public records, and the gap is structural, since no register records leases and no issuer files them; hyperscalers buy land for cash while operators carry the recorded mortgage debt, and registered funds report 36.5% of the largest project bond issue but 3.33% of the second.

  2. Working Paper 10 · September 2026 · PDF

    AI Capex and the Corporate Credit Market: Evidence on Crowding Out, 2010–2026

    No aggregate crowding out: US corporate bond issuance averaged $1.90T per year in 2023–2025 versus $1.68T in 2015–2022 while AI-side capex reached $389B; spreads narrowed and the euro-area credit premium held flat, but manufacturing loan stocks contracted and AI financing shifted toward private credit, project vehicles, and foreign-currency bonds.

AI & Technology Economics

  1. Working Paper 11 · September 2026 · PDF

    Can the AI Buildout Pay for Itself? Demand Absorbability, Price Declines, and the Timing Mismatch in AI Infrastructure Investment

    Each GW of AI facility capacity must generate about $3.55B per year to clear hurdle rates; 2030 capacity forecasts span 108 to 490.7 GW once definitions are separated; the Jevons price channel does not support demand backfire; long-dated contracts written against short-lived accelerators are the central stranding mechanism.

Energy & Commodities

  1. Working Paper 23 · October 2026 · PDF

    Turkey's Power Market, 2016-2026: Generation Mix, Expansion, and Volatility

    Turkey built 57 percent more capacity but generated only 34 percent more power; coal never left, gas became the swing fuel against hydro's swings, and the 2022 price spike hit $211/MWh before the lira absorbed the rest. Households were shielded; industry paid.

  2. Working Paper 18 · October 2026 · PDF

    Small Seeds, Thin Markets: Climate Risk, Supply Chains, and the Economics of Sesame from Farm to Fast Food

    World sesame comes from rainfed smallholders with no strategic stocks; weather explains none of country-level yield moves and world production none of US import prices because buyers switch origins. A 50% price spike costs the average McDonald's $98 a year, but allergen law and rigid supplier approvals turn a short shortage into an operational crisis.

  3. Working Paper 15 · October 2026 · PDF

    The Real Cost of Power: Commercial and Industrial Energy Burden Across the World

    A composite burden index across 54 economies tests whether low nominal tariffs mean low effective burden: Nigeria's $0.049/kWh commercial tariff coexists with an effective burden 5 to 10 times higher, while Ireland's $0.29/kWh industrial price maps to the second-lightest burden; aluminium energy cost per tonne runs $280 in Qatar against $3,745 in Germany.

Science & Engineering

  1. Working Paper 28 · October 2026 · PDF

    Sensitive Light: Geometry, Chaos, and Information Recovery in Null Transport

    How sensitively does light propagation depend on initial conditions, and how much source information survives partial observation? The ratio of Lyapunov exponent to orbital frequency organizes predictability across black holes, a wormhole throat and plasma lenses; the one genuinely chaotic system computed, the Majumdar–Papapetrou di-hole, confines its chaos to a thin fractal set whose outcomes remain 99.3% recoverable under coarse-graining.

  2. Working Paper 26 · October 2026 · PDF

    Directed Null Transport: Point-to-Point Light Convergence Across Geometries, Dimensions, and Media

    Which geometries direct a broad family of light rays from one point to another with synchronized arrival? A survey of point-to-point null-geodesic convergence across general relativity, optical geometry, and laboratory analogues, with a proved obstruction lemma for wormhole refocusing and a new invertibility hierarchy for light-transport reconstruction.

  3. Working Paper 16 · October 2026 · PDF

    From Cherry to Cup: The Science of Coffee

    Canephora carries twice the caffeine of arabica, but arabica's sucrose and lipid advantage explains the sensory gap better than any single compound; dark roast "strength" is manufactured bitterness, not caffeine; caffeine per serving spans tenfold, from a 30 mg finjan of qahwa to a 300 mg Vietnamese phin.

Decision Science