Matthieu Cristelli

Researcher

  • Summary

    I am a theoretical physicist passionate about complexity, in all its forms, graphic, photography and (good) food. Actually, good food likely falls within the complexity dimension: a good dish is for sure something more than the mere sum of its ingredients!

     

    What do I (like to) do? Leveraging (hidden) information from (complex but not necessarily Big) data - I prefer to call them Smart Data as size marginally matters - and eventually providing meaning and value to them.

    Where did I start? Economics. I wanted to establish an effective bridge between the complexity theory and economic one in order to provide a more effective ground for economic practice: a 'more' scientific and 'more' data-driven economic thinking to design better economic policies and eventually deliver better societal wealth.
    In the last years, my interests are also focused on how these research activities may ground strategic consultancy especially for the definition of long term financial investment strategies and for the design of quantitative macroeconomic scenarios to support decision-making processes.

    Since few months, I started to study the other side of any modern economic system, the financial system. I hope to understand the linkage between the two sides, intellectually, this represents my goal in the next years.
      
    I was involved in collaboration projects or I acted as a consultant for several companies (Boston Consulting Group, Royal Dutch Shell, Pangea Formazione, IPPR, Azimut, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IFC-World Bank Group).
    I also co-founded New Economic Metrics BV.

    I am currently Research Associate at Capital Fund Management.

  • We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. 

    (Aristotle)

  • Experience

    Capital Fund Management

    Research Associate July 2017 - present

    International Finance Corporation

    Consultant Dec 2016 - June 2017

    • Project Title: Economic Complexity

    NewEconomicMetrics

    Co-founder Sept. 2015 - present

    Website NewEconomicMetrics

    NewEconomicMetrics offer a novel and data-driven perspective on the fitness and development expectations of national economies. We provide ad-hoc quantitative studies with in-depth focus on GDP growth and industrial sectors for institutional investors, country risk analysts and policy makers.

    Using proprietary machine-learning tools, NewEconomicMetrics analyse patterns in the export data, to provide a quantitative measure of the fitness of an economy and the complexity of each of its products.

    Data driven analysis on economic fitness, GDP growth and product network structure are provided to clients such as risk managers, financial institutions and corporate strategists. Clients include BCG, Shell and Alibaba.

     

     

    ISC-CNR Institute of Complex Systems, Rome

    Post Doc Researcher Jan 2012 - Aug 2016

    PIL Group

    • Economic Complexity: characterization of country competitiveness and product complexity from systems of economical networks. 
    • Development of forecasting tools and quantitative macro economic long term scenarios for country development and portfolio allocation. 
    • Fundamental analysis of economic growth (country, sector and firm analysis).
    • Development of financial indicators for systemic risk.

    CentraleSupélec, Paris

    Visiting Researcher Nov 2015 - Aug 2016

    Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

    External Consultant Aug 2015 - Nov 2015

    Industrial development and economic growth scenarios for ASEAN
    countries and assessment of potential synergies with the Italian industrial systems.

    Azimut

    External Consultant Jun 2015 - present

    Royal Dutch Shell

    External Consultant Sep 2014 - Jan 2015

    • Economic scenarios of long term development, industrialization paths and industrial planning for South Africa

    Collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group

    External Collaborator Jun 2013 - Sep 2013

    • Collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group, Sweden for the development of analysis and methodology used in a BCG report for Swedish Government. 

    Pangea Formazione

    External Consultant Mar 2012 - Jul 2012

    • Forecasting touristic flows and roaming volumes by analysis of query volumes .

    Teaching activities

    Collaboration in the teaching activity of the course of Complex System (Master's Degree), Sapienza University, Rome 2009-2015

    Sapienza, University of Rome

    Ph. D. Student at Dep. of Physics Nov 2008 - Oct 2011

    • Project Title: Complexity in Financial Markets: Modeling Psychological Behavior in Agent-Based Models and Order Book Models
    • Supervisor: Prof. Luciano Pietronero

  • Skills and Specialties

    I have an extensive background in complexity theory and data modeling, statistical analyses, algorithm development for financial (financial markets modeling and time series analysis) and economic systems (quantitative macro-economic scenarios) and web-data. In addition, I am interested and experienced in data-visualization. I am also familiar with web-analytics.

     

    My researches and personal interests on topics bridging different disciplines (Physics, Mathematics, Economics, Finance, Social phenomena) have often led me to develop and adopt “hacking” or non-standard approaches in several contexts. I have a strong expertise in problem identification and problem solving, a wide vision combined with the ability of focusing on the key driving elements of a scenario/problem/analysis.

     

     

    RESEARCH SPECIALTIES: Data analysis and modeling, Data mining and Big Data analysis, Data visualization, Data-driven metrics, Agent-based modeling, Complex systems, Economic Complexity, Economic pathways of development, Macro economic scenarios

     

    Language

     

    English (Fluent), French (Mother Tongue), Italian (Mother Tongue)

     

    Physics

    Complexity, Statistical Physics, Probability

    Economics

    Economic Complexity, Growth, Pathways of Development, Industrialization, Innovation, Macro economic scenarios

    Finance

    Modeling, Order Book dynamics, Time series analysis, Market coherence, Risk, Agent-Based Modeling

    Big Data & Data Mining

    Forecasting tools from web-queries, Trade data, Data-driven metrics, Machine learning

    Word Processing & e-publishing

    Microsoft Office, iWork, OpenOffice, LaTeX, iBooks Author

    Data Viz & Image Editing & Webdesign

     

    Illustrator, Photoshop, Camera Raw, Omnigraffle, Gephi,several Python packages, Infogr.am

    Freeway Pro

     

    Machine Language & OS

    Python (+ several statistical, mathematical and visualization packages), C, C++(basic), Perl (very basic), shell scripting (basic)

    OS: Unix Environment (Mac OS X and Ubuntu), Windows

  • Education

    Sapienza, University of Rome

    Physics, Master’s Degree 2006 - 2008

    • Thesis Title: Agent Based Model and Self-Organization of the Dynamics of the Financial Markets
    • Supervisor: Prof. Luciano Pietronero
    • Date of Graduation: September, 25th 2008
    • Final Mark: 110 /110 cum laude

    Sapienza, University of Rome

    Physics, Bachelor's Degree 2003 - 2006

    • Thesis Title: Statistical Mechanics of a Disordered System: 1D Ising Model.
    • Supervisor: Prof. Angelo Vulpiani and Prof. Massimo Falcioni
    • Date of Graduation: October 2006
    •  110 /110 cum laude

     110 /110 cum laude

    Final Mark: 110 /110 cum laude

  • “Why did nobody notice it?”  

    (Queen Elisabeth II, London School of Economics, November 2008)

  • Projects

    I am or have been involved in the research activities of the following project

    GROWTHCOM

    Growth and Innovation Policy-Modeling - Applying next generation tools, Data, and Economic Ideas

     

    Project website 

    Time span: 2013-2016

    Keywords: Economic Complexity; Big Data; Bipartite Network; New Metrics; Measuring intangibles; Non monetary variables; Industrial competitiveness; Technological evolution; Evolvability; E-commerce ecology

    CRISIS LAB.

    Analytics for Crisis Prediction and Management

     

    Project website 

    Time span: 2012-2015

    Keywords: Economic Complexity; Industrial competitiveness; Firm growth; Technological evolution; Smart Cities, Science of Science, Network Analysis, Risk

    FOC

    Forecasting Financial Crises

     

    Project website

    Time span: 2010-2014

    Keywords: Financial Crisis, Financial networks, Risk, Credit network

  • Research Highlights & Media Coverage

    THE HETEROGENEOUS DYNAMICS OF ECONOMIC COMPLEXITY

    Abstract: Recent results of a new branch—Economic Complexity—have set the basis for a framework to approach such a challenge and to provide new perspectives to cast economic prediction into the conceptual scheme of forecasting the evolution of a dynamical system as in the case of weather dynamics. A recently introduced non-monetary metrics for country competitiveness (fitness) allows for quantifying the hidden growth potential of countries by the means of the comparison of this measure for intangible assets with monetary figures, such as GDP per capita. This comparison defines the fitness-income plane where we observe that country dynamics presents strongly heterogeneous patterns of evolution. The flow in some zones is found to be laminar while in others a chaotic behavior is instead observed. These two regimes correspond to very different predictability features for the evolution of countries: in the former regime, we find strong predictable pattern while the latter scenario exhibits a very low predictability. In such a framework, regressions, the usual tool used in economics, are no more the appropriate strategy to deal with such a heterogeneous scenario and new concepts, borrowed from dynamical systems theory, are mandatory. We therefore propose a data-driven method—the selective predictability scheme—in which we adopt a strategy similar to the methods of analogues, firstly introduced by Lorenz, to assess future evolution of countries.

    Scientific paper: M. Cristelli, A. Tacchella, L. Pietronero, The Heterogeneous Dynamics of Economic Complexity, PLoS ONE 10(2): e0117174. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117174

    Media coverage: Nature Magazine, EU Commission, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Tom's Hardware, Corriere della Sera, Radio Rai 2, L'Espresso

    _______________________________________________________________________________________

    ECONOMIC COMPLEXITY: MEASURING THE INTANGIBLES: A Consumer's Guide

    Matthieu Cristelli, Andrea Tacchella, Luciano Pietronero - [Ebook] [PDF]

    _______________________________________________________________________________________

    press coverage

    Press coverage of research activities in which I am involved as one of the principal investigators

    • Sole24ore 6-nov-2012, Sul podio mondiale l'Italia dell'export
    • Aspenia n.58 oct12, Rinnovare il pensiero scientifico 
    • Aspenia n.59 jan13, Export, specializzazione e complessità 
    • Il Mondo 11-Mar-2013
    • Il Mondo 3-May-2013
    • Spiegel, Innovationsforschung: Vielfalt bringt mehr Fortschritt als Spezialisierung
    • Il Fatto Quotidiano 17-Jun-2013, L’economia è un biosistema
    • Left Jun-2013
    • L’Espresso Jun-2013 
    • Il Mondo 14-Feb-2014, Fisici oltre il PIL, l’idea di Pietronero
    • Pagina99we 15-Marzo-2014, Il potenziale nascosto dell’economia 
    • Nature Magazine Feb 2015, Physicists make ‘weather forecasts’ for economies 
    • EU Commission Feb 20115
    • Bloomberg View, 1-Mar-2015, China Might Still Be Booming
    • Il Fatto Quotidiano, 9-Mar-2015, Quando crescerà il Pil? 
    • Tom's Hardware, 18-Mar-2015, L'Italia è competitiva, dice l'algoritmo del CNR, ma ci frega la corruzione 
    • Corriere della Sera, 18-Mar-2015, I fisici del Cnr inventano l’algoritmo che prevede il Pil. E Alibaba lo adotta
    • Radio Rai 2, Mar 2015
    • Fanpage Scienze, 19-Mar-2015, L’algoritmo italiano che dice qual è il potenziale economico dei paesi 
    • Tiscali Economia, 21-Mar-2015, Pil senza misteri, fisici del Cnr inventano l'algoritmo che prevede la crescita
    • L'Espresso, 8-Apr-2015, Quali Paesi cresceranno di più in futuro? 
    • Repubblica, 13-Apr-2015, Si chiama "export complesso" l'ultima frontiera del business
    • Il Piccolo, 20-Apr-2015, Addio PIL, così si misura la crescita
    • L'Indro, 7-May-2015, PIL cresce chi esporta complesso
    • Today Online, 4-May-2017, Singapore’s future, and lessons from Boston
    • Bloomberg, 4-Oct-2017, A Better Way to Make Economic Forecasts
    • Next Big Future, 5-Oct-2017, Having a wider range and more sophisticated production predicts more future GDP growth

  • Summary of My Main Research Activities

    The main areas of my research activity fall in the following fields

    Economic systems

    Analysis of country import and export flows. Development of tools to evaluate the competitiveness of countries and the complexity of products. Development of forecasting analysis tools and quantitative macro economic scenarios for country growth, economic sectors, and portfolio allocation.

    Financial systems

    Financial market modeling (agent-based models), self-organization of markets, quantitative analysis of specific technical trading techniques, development of tools for assessment of systemic risk.

    Web-data analysis

    Analysis of web-data as proxies to develop forecasting tools for social, economic and financial indicators such as market activity (in collaboration with Yahoo! Research Lab.), touristic flows and phone usage.

  • Publications

    HIGHLIGHTS

    M. Cristelli, A. Tacchella, L. Pietronero

    PLoS ONE 10(2): e0117174. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117174 (2015)

    M. Cristelli, A. Tacchella, A. Gabrielli, G. Caldarelli, L. Pietronero

    PLoS ONE 8(8):e70726.

    doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0070726 (2013)

    R. Di Clemente, M. Cristelli, A. Tacchella, G. Chiarotti, L. Pietronero

    PLoS ONE 9(11): e112525. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0112525 (2014)

  • Publication list

    [R] Referred papers

    [U] Conference proceedings and unreferred papers

    [B] Chapter of books and books

    [WP] Working paper

    2017

    2016

    • F. Piasini, M. Cristelli, A. Tacchella, Measuring market's coherence, (in preparation)

    2015

    2014

    2013

    2012

    2011

    2010

    2009

    Theses

     

  • Honors & Awards

    Ph. D. thesis awarded and published by Springer in Springer Theses Series

    Complexity in Financial Markets Springer These (2014)

    Winner of a three-year Ph. D. fellowship in Physics at Department of Physics, Sapienza Università di Roma (October 2008)

    Award for the achievement of the Master’s Degree, ‘Mario Negri’ Foundation (2010)

  • Contacts

    Email

    LinkedIn

    Twitter

    Youtube

  • #visualtasting

    This is the corner in which you can have a peek into my visual passions. In analogy to my love for tasting new cuisines, I like to define myself as a #visualtaster. When I go around, my thoughts are guided by whatever moves my eyes and sometimes, when I want to share them, I freeze them in a shot.

    This website is a ticket free collection of photo exhibitions, so just follow your dream about what you see. 

    It is the place where I can exhibit my visual experiments. 

    Graphic_arium

    This is my Instagram account dedicated to my production as an iPhoneographer (both shot and post production made with the phone/tablet).

    This is a project I am currently working on. It is about visiting cities, photos and much more! Stay tuned! 

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