David W. Higgins is a new Irish economist providing consulting services to clients.
David’s story is best understood through Carraighill, where he worked for 9 years until 2023, leaving in the role of Chief Economist.
Carraighill is a research consultancy specialising in European financial systems. It was founded in 2013 by Seamus Murphy, a former Davy analyst who correctly predicted the collapse of the Irish banks in 2008. Seamus hired David upon graduation.
David contributed strongly to expanding Carraighill’s coverage of many economic topics. Crucially, David built a suite of regular reports which provided clients with distilled insights on select topics (e.g. European interest rates, UK housing markets and more). This included data solutions which allowed for fast updating of new data.
David has experience in a vast range of economic topics including money and banking, interest rates, swaps, central bank meetings, non-performing loans, EBA stress tests, debt sustainability, TARGET2, payments, asset management holdings, quantitative easing, inflation, fiscal accounts, bond yields, housing markets, balance of payments, sectoral accounts, NACE industries, corporate profitability, NUTS regions, productivity, supply chains, labour markets, migration, demographics, climate change, politics and more.
Irish media regularly call on David for insights on various topics, most notably in 2020/21 during the COVID-19 pandemic. His analysis of data trends drew over 20,000 new followers to twitter. This is a testament of David’s approach. He picks out the most important data, displays it clearly, and draws an audience.
More recently, he has contributed to debates around the Irish housing crisis and demographics.
An independent economist as of 2024, David now aims to provide impactful economic research and data solutions to clients in a range of sectors.
Outside of work, David has over a decade of experience in Irish and European politics. He is a former member of the Emerging Voices Group at the Institute of European and International Affairs (IIEA). The Group of 26 members are young experts in various fields such as law, banking, diplomacy, journalism, energy and public relations.
He’s an active tennis player and bass singer in a choir.
David is a graduate of statistics and economics, a mix of studies which equip him with the tools to solve complex data problems and analyse the workings of the global and Irish economy.