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Policies that Created an Industrialized and Growing Vietnam: Duc Nguyen

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Portrait of Duc Nguyen
Duc Nguyen Photo: A. Macedo

Vietnam has grown significantly over the last three decades. Since 1990 its GDP has doubled. Macro development economist Duc Nguyen, a PhD candidate with the Department of Economics, investigated what policies the country has pursued to achieve this growth, and what lessons other countries learn from Vietnam’s reforms. His investigations, captured in the job market paper Openness to Foreign Firms, Industrialization and Aggregate Growth, were deeply rooted in an understanding of the role of market reforms in economic development.

“Before 1990 Vietnam was a totally Communist centrally planned economy with no market,” Nguyen explained. “People were very poor, there wasn’t enough food for example. You can’t even say that food was very expensive because there was no market there, there wasn’t even enough supply. After 1990, when they opened the economy, opportunities increased significantly. Many of my relatives benefited and everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic status, saw opportunities and gained a lot from that early period of reform.” [Read more…]

Understanding China’s 5G Standardization: Myeongwan Kim

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Portrait of PhD candidate Myeongwan Kim
Myeongwan Kim Photo: A. Macedo

Standardization ensures technologies work together. As innovations continue, standardization continues to ensure the integration of hardware and software and, since the advent of smartphones, it has become easier and easier to take for granted the synchronous use of mobile networks, operating systems, and apps. Myeongwan Kim, a PhD candidate with the Department of Economics, has been researching how the Chinese government has been advancing specific homegrown technologies toward the international standard-setting organization (SSO) that sets these standards for compatibility in mobile communications. His findings are described in the paper Exporting State-Promoted Technologies and the Direction of Global Innovation: Evidence from 5G Standardization.

“The Chinese government provides guidance on which specific technologies to promote by publishing policy documents, essentially white papers, and ensures all Chinese firms participating in standard setting comply with this guidance,” Kim explained. “They meet all Chinese firms before each standardization meeting to share their political priorities and ensure compliance. If firms don’t comply, they face punishment, as seen with Lenovo in 2016. This shows that regardless of whether firms are private or state-owned, they must follow the government’s political objectives in the area of 5G standardization.” [Read more…]

Breaking Up with McMansions: Urban Economist James Macek

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Portrait of James Macek
James Macek Photo credit: A. Macedo

To address the housing shortage and affordability crisis, North America needs to break up with the McMansion. McMansions, a term that describes generic and oversize mass-produced suburban homes at the core of urban sprawl, are not the specific target of urban economist James’ Macek latest paper, but the are a symptom of the problem he has identified.

Macek, a PhD student with the Department of Economics, has investigated how municipal regulations concerning minimum lot size for houses affects people’s well-being, city structure, and housing affordability.

“Housing costs and affordability issues have become worse over time and are absolutely detrimental to young people and those on the cusp of being able to afford a home, in both Canada and the US. One of the reasons why housing is so unaffordable is because the housing market, both in the US and Canada, is one of the most regulated on Earth,” Macek explained. [Read more…]

PhD Student Adrian Schroeder Wins Econometrics Award

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Portrait of PhD candidate Adrian Schroeder
Adrian Schroeder Photo credit: A. Macedo

Adrian Schroeder, a PhD student with the Department of Economics won the Best Graduate Research Poster Award at the Canadian Econometrics Study Group (CESG) annual conference on October 25-27, 2024. Fifty-three researchers representing universities and monetary institutions in seven different countries including Belgium, France, and Australia presented posters over the weekend-long conference. Highly visual representations of methods and data, research posters are considered valuable presentation tools in econometrics, a field that applies theoretical models to datasets to evidence policy implementation and equip economists with new tools. [Read more…]

Taking Down the Economics of Crime: Heather Bone

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Portrait of PhD Candidate Heather Bone
PhD Candidate Heather Bone Photo: A.Macedo

Heather Bone is a specialist in the economics of crime. It’s the basis of her research and there are traces of it in her tutorials and involvement in the broader community. Her research, though, is not like the true crime stories Bone remembers her mother watching throughout her childhood in Brussels, Ontario. Her job market paper, Kingpin Down: Power Vacuums, Market Structure, and the Violent Consequences of High-Profile Arrests, studies a policy that is often used by governments to combat organized crime. The policy involves targeting the top leaders, or kingpins, of criminal enterprises for capture or removal. Bone’s paper studies the policy’s effects in the context of Mexico during a period in which homicide rates more than doubled.

“The government implemented the policy with the aim of reducing violence in the long term,” Bone explained. “However, my findings indicate that the policy leads to an increase in violence in the short to medium term, with no evidence of a long-term reduction.” [Read more…]

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