Statement of Purpose
Chi-yang Chu Jan. 10, 2009
The farthest reaching impact on my life was from my professor who taught econometric method 1 in my graduate school. Before being taught by him, I had thought that econometrics was just something about imaginary mathematic deduction and therefore had little practical value. Because of this, it had held little interest for me. However, he knew how to explain abstruse econometric theories through simple language, how to skillfully apply theories to the world, how to lay the focus of econometrics on the economic meanings behind mathematic formulas, and most impressively how to link mathematics to economics. This smooth-faced way I was taught by my professor to treat econometrics is very similar to the manner expounded by Professor Peter Kennedy in his book “A Guide to Econometrics”. My professor let me know how powerfully economics and econometrics explain the operation of an economy. I enjoyed his class and became more and more interested in econometrics. The following paragraphs will show my interest in econometrics and passion for teaching, both which drive me to pursue a Ph.D. in economics.
The process of the transformation from an ideal economic world to a more real one is interesting in econometrics textbooks. Classical assumptions, introduced in the first chapter of any econometrics textbook, simplify the world with complicated economic phenomena into a world with plain economic phenomena. Under the assumptions, a best linear unbiased estimator, a perfect regression model with the best predicting ability, can be made by statistical methods. Economists can easily explain and predict the changes in the economic phenomena of a plain world through the estimator. However, they know that even though a restricted world by the assumptions is ideal and harmonious, it doesn’t exist in reality. Thus, these impractical assumptions must be violated in following chapters in order to study a more real economic world. In other words, because classical assumptions are not valid, an ideal economic world begins to become more complicated and changes toward a more real economic world. It is this process of the transformation that I find interesting.
The economic forecasting implicating both scientific and artistic natures is a kind of very special work in which I am also interested. Some years ago, my professor once said in a lecture that economic forecasting is not only a scientific job but also an artistic job for him. Furthermore, Professor Emanuel Derman, who serves in Columbia University's Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department, mentions in “My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance” that a piece of art can be considered a concrete representation of an artist’s observing, understanding, and describing nature; likewise, a model can be considered a graceful and realistic representation of an economist’s observing, understanding, and describing an economic phenomenon. Stated another way, the appearance of a model is determined by an economist’s subjective knowledge of an economic phenomenon and his or her creativity. This is a kind of skillfully artistic method. However, the process of constructing a model absolutely needs scientific knowledge or econometric methods.
Another motivation of pursuing a Ph.D. in economics, besides being charmed by econometrics, is that I aspire to engage in teaching. In the first year of my graduate studies, I had the opportunity to be a teaching assistant for the economics reviewing lab for freshmen. The pleasure of summarizing the focus of the economics lesson on a board, lecturing on a stage, and interacting with students invoked my passion for teaching. Importantly, imparting economics to students and making them enjoy it brought me a lot of pleasure and fulfillment.
Chi-yang Chu Jan. 10, 2009
About my study objectives, the extension of my master thesis is my top priority. This extension and other study objectives are as follows: Extending my master thesis is one of my primary goals. The title of the thesis is “Change in Export Structure and Economic Growth: The Case of Taiwan”. A brief summary of the thesis is as follows:
(A) Research motive: In references, the structure of export is seldom put into consideration in the discussions about export and output. The variable of export structure in the research completed by Balaguer and Cantavella-Jorda’ in 2004, the only relevant paper then, is not applicable to Taiwan. Therefore, I intend to make up the deficiency of the design in the variable by the thesis.
(B) Research objective: The purpose of the thesis is to investigate the causality among these three variables of output, export, and export structure.
(C) Research method: Unit root and co-integration tests are conducted on the three variables and then Granger causality/block-exogeneity test is conducted in a vector error correction model.
(D) Conclusion: There is a bi-directional causality between the export and the output. The export structure only causes a unidirectional effect on the export and the output, and transforms from the labor-intensive products (agriculture industries and traditional manufacturing industries) to the capital and technology-intensive products (basic and technology-intensive manufacturing industries).
(E) Extension: First of all, there is still room for improvement in the design in the variable of export structure. Secondly, putting unit root test for structural change, impulse response functions, and variance decomposition into consideration will make the analysis more complete. What’s more, further research could be made on the changes in the export structures of other export-oriented countries or developing countries, and applicable export structure variables could be worked out according to the features of the countries. Last, a variable of economic structure could be included or even replace a variable of export structure. Another one of my crucial goals is to do in-depth studies and research on time series. Because unit root test and co-integration test were adopted as the research methods in my master thesis, I began to touch the field of time series and found it as interesting as econometrics. As a last goal, I hope that I could have an opportunity to have advanced studies on macroeconomics including economic growth, international finance, and money & banking. I once served as a teaching assistant and a project assistant, and published my master thesis in a research conference. These experiences have enabled me to have the confidence of pursuing a Ph.D. in economics. In University of California-Riverside’s Department of Economics, there are many outstanding faculty members in the field of econometrics. A series of very strong econometrics courses in your program really interest me, such as econometric methods 1, 2, 3, and advanced econometrics including 6 much more in-depth courses. This focus is significantly different from what other schools offer. Should I be given the opportunity to complete the Ph.D. program at UCR, I would strive to be an economist who is capable of skillfully manipulating both economic theories and econometric models to explain the complicated economic phenomena in reality and finally become an asset to our society.
請先 登入 以發表留言。