Andrew Scott has been a busy man recently.
The London Business School professor works in one of the few high-profile professions to profit from financial uncertainty surrounding the euro-zone debt crisis and the economic slowdown in the US.
"Economists are more busy these days, and I think the reason is obvious," says the professor of economics and deputy dean of programmes. "I don't want to say it's great. I'm really busy and this is wonderful, because it's fairly miserable going around being miserable about the world economy. It's not pleasant."
However, he reluctantly acknowledges one upside of the uncertainty: a research agenda that will last for the rest of his career, at least.
"I think the big issues are as follows: it's about the role of balance sheets in economic fluctuations; how we properly model the financial sector and the banking sector … and how imperfections in that system affect the real economy … I think the other really big one is how people form their expectations of the future and how they learn about the world and how to deal with risk," he says.
As global markets falter and fluctuate, many people turn to economists to explain the markets' behaviour and in some cases even to make predictions.
But they do not have all the answers. And economists are not very good at forecasting at the best of times, Prof Scott says.
In fact, he says, being an economist is a bit like being in the medical profession in this respect: patients do not generally ask doctors what their health will be in the future.
"What you do go to the doctor for is an intervention. You say 'doctor I'm not feeling very well. I've got a headache, a temperature, and I'm coughing a lot', and the doctor says 'it sounds like a chest infection. Take these tablets and you should get better.'
"Governments come to me and say 'Andrew, the economy is not doing very well, unemployment is rising and industrial production is falling', and I say 'it sounds like a recession. Cut interest rates, spend some money, and it should get better'."
And the economic uncertainty only serves to make forecasting more difficult. But volatility is the reason that economists are so much in demand at the moment.
He says the best they can do is set out the range of possibilities and help governments select policies to weather the storm.
So, with that in mind, does he have any predictions?
"The two things that are going to carry on [are, one,] the continual concerns about the weakness of the financial sector everywhere; and, [two,] as a consequence of that, considerable concerns about risk," he says.
Another consequence of the crisis is that his travel outside the West has increased, and he has recently visited China, Hong Kong, Jordan, Qatar and the UAE.
Indeed, he recently returned from Mauritius, where he is an economic adviser to the prime minister, Navin Ramgoolam. "He asks me to be keep him abreast with what's happening in the world economy, and he asks me to sort of keep him up to date with policy ideas around the world," Prof Scott says.
"A former student … went back to Mauritius, was elected as an MP and introduced me to the PM, who was looking for an adviser. So that's how I got the job," Prof Scott says.
He travels to the island nation in the south-west Indian Ocean about five or six times a year. He is also in the UAE regularly to teach at the London Business School branch in Dubai or for duties related to being deputy dean of programmes.
"I guess at the moment I'm travelling every other week," he says. "And I spend a lot of time in Dubai Airport waiting for connections."
