Soumaya Anne Keynes (born 1 August 1989)[1] is a British journalist and current economics columnist at the Financial Times [2] and the great-great-great-granddaughter of English Naturalist Charles Darwin [3] In addition to her work as a columnist for the FT, she started hosting a new podcast for them in May 2024, on economic matters.

[4] Before joining the Financial Times, she worked for eight years as the Britain economics editor at The Economist magazine.

[7] Her career in economic research began as a policy adviser for Her Majesty's Treasury in London, looking at banking and credit.

[14] Her maternal grandmother, Furugh Afnan, was the great-granddaughter of Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Baháʼí Faith, making Keynes a great-great-great-granddaughter of Baha'u'llah.

[citation needed] On her paternal side, she is the great-great-niece of John Maynard Keynes, a British economist who had a large impact on macroeconomic theory and policy.

[15] During her work at the institute for Fiscal Studies she frequently published research with Carl Emmerson, Rowena Crawford, and Gemma Tetlow.

[25] Keynes joined The Economist in June 2015 after receiving an email from the magazine's economics editor asking her to apply for the position.

[12][26] She began by writing the Free Exchange column, which provides a literature review of recent papers in economics.

Her early work had a wide scope and covered a variety of topics, such as the Big Mac Index.

[35] She has also done episodes in a similar vein to her previous work with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, examining the impact of economic research on public policy.

[24][29][42] Keynes co-hosts the podcast Trade Talks with Chad Bown, an economist at The Peterson Institute for International Economics.

[51][52] Working alongside Rowena Crawford and Gemma Tetlow, Keynes investigated the impact of the newest reforms to the UK pension system in 2013.

[55] While there would be short-term winners, the changes ultimately lead those soon reaching retirement age to have mixed results, with 35% of men receiving gains and 61% of women.

[58] The paper found, significantly, that only 17% of those closest to retirement would actually receive a pension in the single tier entitlement.

[57] Keynes stated that despite the system not being entirely a single payout it would allow for greater ease in predicting future pension payments.

[54] Another finding was that the system, while incurring losses for future pensioners in the United Kingdom, did have reason to cut back.

[60] The research examined the fiscal spending and borrowing plans of each of the United Kingdom's major political parties.

Overall the researchers faced difficulties in trying to determine the true intentions of the parties, as not all were forthcoming with their full spending and borrowing plans.

[61] Ultimately the researchers had to estimate multiple pieces of parties' plans in order to determine the real numbers that would be used by the next government.

[60] When the conservative party won the 2015 general election this research proved valuable for others who sought to examine the impacts of their plans over the course of the coming years.

[68][67][69][70][71] The piece focuses on the disparity between men and women in the field of research economics and why this matters for the profession.

Student evaluations have been shown to discriminate against women, leading to greater difficulty in achieving tenure.

[67][70] She argues that the gap between male and female economists, which is currently growing, must shrink in order to solve this issue.

Keynes states this won't be easy, economics has an image problem, seen as a mostly male field.