Biography – Dennis Shen
Dennis Shen – Economist
Dennis Shen is a macroeconomist and Chair of the Macroeconomic Council of Scope Ratings – the European rating agency – based in Berlin, Germany. He is a strong and passionate believer in strengthening the precision of economic and financial judgment and forecasting – for anchoring better public-policy outcomes and supporting greater efficiency of global capital markets.
Dennis co-authored the “DSSI+” debt-restructuring framework, and is an advocate of strengthened global debt relief supporting low- and middle-income economies. He believes in credit-rating industry reform. Alongside the economist Moritz Krämer, Dennis presented a loss-given-default sovereign-rating framework as one proposal for incentivising more comprehensive sovereign debt restructuring.
Dennis has appeared on CNBC Europe, Bloomberg TV Bulgaria and CGTN Africa, with research and commentary presented frequently on print and online mediums such as Reuters, Bloomberg, and The Financial Times, and cited within magazines and books such as Wirtschaftskrieg (2020). He has received multiple Focus Economics analyst forecast awards, and was a selected member of the jury of the 2022 and 2024 Emerging Europe Awards and panellist of Jubilee Germany during the 2022 G7 finance ministers meetings from Bonn, Germany.
A graduate of the London School of Economics (LSE), Dennis believes in his university motto of “rerum cognoscere causa” – to know the causes of things – and seeks in professional life to better understand the world and address problems through reinforcing the understanding. A regular contributor for the university, his research on the crisis of narcissism and associated socio-psychological effects for governance and business cycles received recognition.
Dennis supports the Berlin-based NGO, Visioneers gGmbH, as a member of the Supervisory Board and supporting on German-English translations. Dennis sits as a member of the Experts Board of Wikirating Association, and is a lecturer on sovereign ratings at the International School of Management (Germany).
Before joining Scope Group in 2017, Dennis was an economist with Alliance Bernstein (AB) – a global institutional money manager – in New York and London. At AB, Dennis developed projects such as co-designing the Carson-Shen monetary policy rule with Chief Economist Joseph Carson and assessing the dynamic nature of fiscal multipliers. He was a member of the acclaimed emerging market debt group of Paul Denoon.
Dennis completed the Master of Public Administration (MPA) in International Development from the LSE, during which he co-founded the graduate programme's The Public Sphere Journal and led the programme during 2012 and 2013 conference debates against Princeton University. In London, Dennis completed public-speaking training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). He graduated from undergraduate studies from Cornell University in New York concentrating on Financial Engineering.
Dennis has a record of precise assessments and forecasting ranging from the 2014-15 Greece crisis to Brexit to ahead of and during the global pandemic.
Given the dangers from the climate crisis, he has supported the integration of environment, social and governance (ESG) considerations in the capital markets. While living in New York, he co-founded the Junior Ocean Council of Oceana – the world's largest organisation dedicated to ocean preservation. Dennis completed his Dissertation from the LSE with Distinction on the subject of environmental economics.
Dennis was born in Sichuan Province of mainland China and grew up in the United States. He resides with his spouse, whom he met during university in London, and daughter in Berlin.