denismaciel.com

Portrait of Denis Maciel

I'm Denis.

Ex-lawyer, recovering economist, software engineer focused on data.

I write code for fun and for profit.

Born in Brazil. Turned German. Currently based in Lisbon.

Reach me at me·at·denismaciel.com.

projects

Casatoo

Finds Portuguese homes before they disappear from the market

Heraclito

Legal AI that reads Brazilian case law like a tireless associate

Beluga

Turns social chatter into signals teams can act on

Danton

Tracks Brazilian politics before bills become problems

Praise Penguin RIP

Made Slack praise feel a little less awkward

work

Founding Engineer & Head of Datare:cap

Sep 2021 – Present

ML EngineerABOUT YOU

Mar 2020 – Aug 2021

Data ScientistDataiku

May 2019 – Feb 2020

Data ScientistTandemploy

June 2017 – Feb 2019

Data AnalystGeschenkidee.de

June 2015 – Jul 2017

education

MSc EconomicsHumboldt University of Berlin· 1.7

Sep 2016 – Oct 2021

BSc EconomicsHumboldt University of Berlin· 1.7

Oct 2012 – Sep 2015

academic work

Demand Learning under Limited Inventory: a simulation-based study

Oct 27, 2021[code][pdf]

Master thesis studying dynamic pricing when sellers must learn demand under limited inventory, successfully reproducing the source paper's Thompson-sampling results before showing that the edge weakens under competition

Causal Forests: How machine learning can enhance econometrics in uncovering heterogeneous causal effects

Jul 20, 2019[code][pdf]

Seminar paper applying causal forests to the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, finding that Medicaid appears to increase emergency-department use for most participants while the estimated individual effects remain too uncertain to confirm meaningful heterogeneity

Replication of Erceg & Lindé (2012): Is there a Fiscal Free Lunch in a Liquidity Trap?

Aug 22, 2016[code][pdf]

Seminar paper replicating Erceg and Lindé's New Keynesian liquidity-trap model, showing that government spending can have unusually large output effects but that the fiscal free lunch result depends on trap duration, price rigidity, monetary-policy response, and debt dynamics

Backus, Kehoe and Kydland (1993) - International Business Cycles: Theory and Evidence - Have the conclusions changed?

Sep 5, 2015[code][pdf]

Bachelor thesis revisiting Backus, Kehoe and Kydland's international business-cycle evidence with 23 additional years of data, concluding that the quantity anomaly still persists