LED Alumni Spotlight: Eric Benyo, Master of Arts in Business Economics (2020)

Today’s spotlight features Laurier alumnus, Eric Benyo. Eric graduated from the Master of Arts in Business Economics in 2020 and is currently working as a senior analyst at Morningstar Sustainalytics. We recently learned that Eric’s major research project, a capstone component of his graduate program, was published in Economic Inquiry. He co-authored this paper with his supervisor Stephen Snudden and Reinhard Ellwanger, from the Bank of Canada. It took some time to publish this paper but as Professor Snudden observes, “persistence matters just as much as strong research!” Congratulations Eric on your perseverance and publication!    

We took this opportunity to talk to Eric about his research and his professional journey since graduating from Laurier.

Can you tell us a little about what the paper is about and why you think it is important?

The paper conducts a replication of Baumeister and Kilian's work from 2012 to reappraise real-time forecasts of the real price of crude oil, relative to an end-of-month (rather than monthly average) no-change forecast. Our results show the predictive accuracy of model-based forecasts do not demonstrate regular, significant improvement over the end-of-month no-change forecast, at short-term horizons.

The work is important because it challenges the consensus on the predictability of the real price of crude oil. It also motivates broader reassessment and replication of forecasting models for period-average data, like primary commodity prices and macroeconomic series.

What advice would you give to a MABE student who is just about to start working on their major research project?

There are two pieces of advice I would give.

• Be succinct, skip the fluff. Be simple and clear when writing your major research project.

• Writing takes time. Do a little every day and when a draft is almost finished, step away for a day or two and come back to it with a clear mind.

Tell us a little about what you have been doing since graduating from Laurier?

As part of the MABE program, I had a co-op at a startup, Autocase, that specialized in triple-bottom line cost benefit analysis consulting for sustainable infrastructure projects. After graduation, I worked at Autocase full time for about two years. Since late 2021, I have been working at Morningstar Sustainalytics, building Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) methodologies that investors use in their assessments of companies.

What do you find most exciting about your current role?

As a Senior Analyst at Morningstar Sustainalytics, I build and maintain ESG methodologies and their calculation engines. What I find most exciting about it is the variety of topics that I conduct data analysis and model building on. One day I might focus on analyzing the impact of ESG risk on Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and mutual funds, and the next day I might be building a model to assess corporate climate change commitments.