Writing

The Conch Paradox

The Conch Paradox: Rethinking Resilience was published in March 2026. The queen conch grows a shell so thick that almost nothing in the sea can break it, which leaves it slow, conspicuous, and easy for anyone with a boat to pick up off the seabed.

Caribbean economies have done something comparable. A tourism sector that converts sunshine into foreign exchange, a currency peg that imports monetary credibility, a constitutional arrangement that supplies a fiscal backstop: these are the specialisations that made the region successful, and they are where the exposure is now concentrated. None of them were mistakes. Each one worked. Each one also narrowed the range of shocks the economy could absorb.

It is written for readers who are not economists, and it deliberately does not end each chapter with a summary of what you were supposed to have learned.

theconchparadox.com

Essays and op-eds

Written in a personal capacity. The recurring subjects are fiscal capacity and what a small open economy can carry, the design of disaster financing, and what the Kingdom’s constitutional architecture makes possible for the Caribbean territories.

Small islands reveal a blind spot in resilience thinking

World Economic Forum · 4 February 2026

When COVID-19 hit, Caribbean tourism economies contracted by more than seven per cent, four times the rate of other emerging markets. They were not caught off-guard because they had failed to prepare. They were caught because the preparation had worked too well for too long. Specialised resilience produces generalised vulnerability, and small islands are where the mechanism is easiest to see.

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Come pa biba, of biba pa come?

Dossier Koninkrijksrelaties · 17 August 2026

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Rich in reserves, poor in protection: the most expensive way to carry risk

Dossier Koninkrijksrelaties · 10 July 2026

Every year the IMF reviews the Dutch Caribbean’s foreign reserves and mostly calls them adequate. Adequate for defending a peg is not adequate for financing a recovery, and holding reserves is the most expensive way to carry a risk that cheaper instruments price better.