Welcome
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In brief: an academic and practitioner
Academic...
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In detail: Entrepreneurial ventures
In 2016, with my two partners and academic co-authors, we founded Oraclum Intelligence Systems Ltd, a UK-based data company that used social networks to predict election outcomes, market direction and volatility, product demand, and consumer behavior. The whole thing started as an academic project in predicting elections. We developed a new innovative way of doing surveys and picking out correct signals of behavior, using a combination of wisdom of crowds and network science. Our biggest success were the predictions of Brexit and Trump in 2016, and Biden in 2020 (all within a single percentage point accuracy), and over the next five years we have been using the methodology mostly in marketing projects and predicting sentiment. As of 2021, we adapted the methodology to successfully predict weekly market sentiment, and have been doing that ever since.
The success of our live trading strategy based on the signals from our innovation encouraged us to start our own hedge fund, Oraclum Capital (ORCA), in December 2022.
With a partner I also run a boutique rating agency called Clout & Wolf Rating Agency Ltd., based in London which provides the following services: credit scoring, risk modelling of financial assets, deep due diligence to uncover corruption risk and fraud, and various API data services. This venture also came as a consequence of my academic work and published papers.
As of March 2020 I am, on a voluntary basis, the board member of Udruga Glas Poduzetnika (Voice of Entrepreneurs), a newly founded association of SMEs that has successfully lobbied the Croatian government in April 2020 for a stimulus package to save the economy from the impact of COVID-19. This got me a position of an expert member of the Parliamentary Committee on budget and finance in Croatia.
As an anti-corruption advocate, based on my PhD research on local government corruption, I successfully influenced the Croatian Parliament to pass a budget transparency law in 2021, requiring all units of local government to publish all of their spending online, with receipts, proofs of purchases, and signed contracts. The battle is ongoing, even though I'm no longer a part of it.
In detail: Academic achievements
I hold a PhD in political economy from the University of Oxford, Pembroke College. My thesis looked at how the collusion between politicians and firms (an interaction I define as elite networks) affects the distribution of top incomes. I successfully defended the thesis in record time, after only two and a half years of study (from September 2016 to March 2019). During my time at Oxford I was a teaching assistant at the Oxford Q-step Center, teaching 1st year PhD course Causal Inference, and I held workshops in R. The thesis has been turned into a book, titled "Elite Networks: The Political Economy of Inequality", published by the Oxford University Press.
Prior to all this I worked as a lecturer at the Department of Economics, Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZSEM) for four years, where I taught Political economy, Principles of Economics, International Economics and Public Finance. I was a research fellow for the Adam Smith Institute in London, and am member of the board at the Science and Society Synergy Institute.
I hold a Master of Science degree from the London School of Economics, also in political economy. I received my BA in economics from the University of Zagreb, from which I graduated magna cum laude. During my studies I attended summer schools at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard University. I was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, Clare College during the summer of 2013.
I am happily married and a father of two boys and one baby girl. Last but not least, I have a passion for cooking.
In 2016, with my two partners and academic co-authors, we founded Oraclum Intelligence Systems Ltd, a UK-based data company that used social networks to predict election outcomes, market direction and volatility, product demand, and consumer behavior. The whole thing started as an academic project in predicting elections. We developed a new innovative way of doing surveys and picking out correct signals of behavior, using a combination of wisdom of crowds and network science. Our biggest success were the predictions of Brexit and Trump in 2016, and Biden in 2020 (all within a single percentage point accuracy), and over the next five years we have been using the methodology mostly in marketing projects and predicting sentiment. As of 2021, we adapted the methodology to successfully predict weekly market sentiment, and have been doing that ever since.
The success of our live trading strategy based on the signals from our innovation encouraged us to start our own hedge fund, Oraclum Capital (ORCA), in December 2022.
With a partner I also run a boutique rating agency called Clout & Wolf Rating Agency Ltd., based in London which provides the following services: credit scoring, risk modelling of financial assets, deep due diligence to uncover corruption risk and fraud, and various API data services. This venture also came as a consequence of my academic work and published papers.
As of March 2020 I am, on a voluntary basis, the board member of Udruga Glas Poduzetnika (Voice of Entrepreneurs), a newly founded association of SMEs that has successfully lobbied the Croatian government in April 2020 for a stimulus package to save the economy from the impact of COVID-19. This got me a position of an expert member of the Parliamentary Committee on budget and finance in Croatia.
As an anti-corruption advocate, based on my PhD research on local government corruption, I successfully influenced the Croatian Parliament to pass a budget transparency law in 2021, requiring all units of local government to publish all of their spending online, with receipts, proofs of purchases, and signed contracts. The battle is ongoing, even though I'm no longer a part of it.
In detail: Academic achievements
I hold a PhD in political economy from the University of Oxford, Pembroke College. My thesis looked at how the collusion between politicians and firms (an interaction I define as elite networks) affects the distribution of top incomes. I successfully defended the thesis in record time, after only two and a half years of study (from September 2016 to March 2019). During my time at Oxford I was a teaching assistant at the Oxford Q-step Center, teaching 1st year PhD course Causal Inference, and I held workshops in R. The thesis has been turned into a book, titled "Elite Networks: The Political Economy of Inequality", published by the Oxford University Press.
Prior to all this I worked as a lecturer at the Department of Economics, Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZSEM) for four years, where I taught Political economy, Principles of Economics, International Economics and Public Finance. I was a research fellow for the Adam Smith Institute in London, and am member of the board at the Science and Society Synergy Institute.
I hold a Master of Science degree from the London School of Economics, also in political economy. I received my BA in economics from the University of Zagreb, from which I graduated magna cum laude. During my studies I attended summer schools at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard University. I was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, Clare College during the summer of 2013.
I am happily married and a father of two boys and one baby girl. Last but not least, I have a passion for cooking.
