Nils Rochowicz

Nils is a Visiting Fellow at the Growth Lab for the fall term 2025, working on understanding and predicting the dynamics of economic complexity. He is a PhD student in mathematics at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford University, and a PhD student in economics at the Chemnitz University of Technology.

Nils’s broader research agenda centers on technology: Where do new technologies come from, and how do they impact the economy and society? He has worked on technology prediction, measurement of patent novelty and impact, evolution of technology networks, effectiveness of technology policies, industrial policy, and the labour market impacts of new technologies. To tackle these questions, Nils develops and uses advanced tools from mathematics, physics, and network science, and aims to combine these with methodologies and insights from economics.

During his stay at the Growth Lab, his research focusses on studying the combinatorial and economic processes underlying economic complexity at fine-grained levels. To do this, he leverages novel methodologies to understand how economic complexity changes with respect to changing trade patterns and economic policies. In a second project, he uses highly disaggregated firm level datasets to understand how firm-level economic processes shape the evolution of country-level comparative advantage. Furthermore, he is interested in understanding and measuring economic complexity at the technological frontier.