Adam Bin Romzi is a Research Analyst at the Asia Competitiveness Institute (ACI), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS). He holds an MSc in Economics (with Distinction) from University College London (UCL) and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Durham University.
At ACI, Adam contributes to both institutional core projects and independent research. He is currently working on a project that aims to characterise true foreign direct investment (FDI) flows using granular firm-level data from the Orbis database. To construct a better representation of investment activity within ASEAN, this project looks at decomposing conventional FDI figures to distinguish economically substantive investments from pass-through flows routed through financial hubs, allowing a better understanding of who controls and benefits from FDI.
Adam’s research interests also include applied econometrics, poverty economics, spatial economics, and social network theory. He focuses on causal identification strategies to understand the structural determinants of poverty, inequality, and other social challenges within the ASEAN context. Prior to joining ACI, Adam completed his master’s thesis investigating the causal relationship between city shape and residential segregation in the context of India, using a non-linear instrumental variable approach based on spatial constraints.