Viking Waldén

1. Describe your role and what it is that you do overall and on a day-to-day basis

I work with monetary policy at the Swedish central bank, Riksbanken. My unit works with forecasting and macroeconomic modelling, and I work with forecasting questions such as disposable income and house prices. These forecasts aid in setting the Riksbank's policy rates.

2. What is the attraction of doing research?

No other job gives you pay and a large amount of time to think about, basically, whatever you want. It's a remarkable situation to be in, really.

3. Why did you choose to do your PhD at SSE?

SSE has an excellent economics department with a very broad faculty. No matter what topics you'd like to work on, there's bound to be a supervisor with experience in your field. That's very rare for such a small department.

4. Following the time at SSE, do you have any words of wisdom or advice you would like to share with our current students? 

Be disciplined and see research as a 9-5 job (or whatever times work well for you). Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good - get to work and start writing.

5. What are three words that sum up your time at SSE?

Intellectually rewarding and challenging.