Personal Statement
Applicant: xx    Program Applied: Industrial Economics and Development Economics

With strong background in economics and mathematics, an intense passion for research, and the resolution to excel at every challenge, I am committed to succeeding in your Ph.D. program whereby to develop new perspectives and methodologies. I believe that China’s economic issues can be studied more fruitfully by applying modern western economic theories and analytical techniques and the research findings will eventually contribute to more sound policy making. My aspiration is to become one of the most outstanding Chinese economists in industrial economics and developmental economics who can make a significant contribution to those fields while achieving my full self-actualization.

My strong academic background in economics comes from both the undergraduate and graduate programs at College of Economics, xx University, which boasts the strongest teaching and research in economics in the country and is the veritable cradle for leading economists. Majoring in Economics as an undergraduate and in Political Economics as a graduate, I have studied Economics not only in great breadth but also in great depth through a complete spectrum of foundational courses as well as specialized courses. My academic excellence can be indicated by the following facts. I acquired straight “A”s in mathematics courses and in virtually every economics course. This rare achievement allowed me to reach, according to Peking University’s grading system, an overall GPA of 3.87/4.0 (89.42/100) and a major GPA of 3.96 for my undergraduate program, which ranked me second among a total of 31 student. During my graduate program, I continued to excel, ending up in an overall GPA of 3.81.

Behind all those statistics lied my intense interest and utmost exertion in studying economics, a subject that is of vital importance to China as it experiences an unprecedented economic development in history in which many of its unique but variegated economic phenomena need theoretical explanations and many economic practices need theoretical guidance from the most updated research findings.

Throughout my academic career, I have always been interested in industrial economics, development economics and econometrics. This explains my excellence in all of them. Of course, I also excelled in macroeconomics. While econometrics and mathematics provided me with the tools with which to analyze real world economic issues, I believed that economic development and industrial organization should be the proper subject of economics study for a developing country like China. Hence, most of my academic endeavors have been centered on those two crucial fields.

In industrial economics, I was most enlightened by the book Sources of Industrial Leadership: Studies of Seven Industries (David C. Mowery and Rchard R. Nelson, 1999), whose central concept of “industrial leadership” I regard as highly relevant to China’s current industrial realities. The perspectives of the book helped me gain insights into why particular countries become leaders in particular industries. The influence exerted on me by this book was such that much of my research on China’s high-tech industries was informed by many key concepts proposed in the book.

A graduate course “Economic Development Theory and Case Studies” ushered me into the realm of development economics. Among a host of books and treatises I read on the subject, A.K. Sen’s The Concept of Development in Handbook of Development Economics and Charles Jones’ On the Evolution of the World Income Distribution in the Journal of Economic Perspectives called my attention to such issues as the pattern of economic development and growth, poverty, and land property rights.

As TA to Prof. xx, chairman of the Economics Department, on the course Development Economics, I served as instructor to a class of 30 junior undergraduate students in their group discussions, case analyses, field trips, writing of reports and course papers. I also directed and organized the field study of rural-urban migration and the paper we produced-- xx—introduced important revisions into the Todaro Model.

As a matter of fact, in the research-intensive academic environment which is xx University, I started my research career when I was just a senior undergraduate. In participating in the annual “xx Cup” Treatise Competition, I came up with a treatise on the mechanism of developing the human labor capital in China’s western region as the key to enhance the efficiency of the conventional agriculture in the region and to facilitate its transformation to modern agricultural patterns. In undertaking this research, I draw important inspirations from Transforming Traditional Agriculture by T.W. Schultz. My undergraduate research experience also included acting as RA at the E-Business Center of xx University, participating in a series of research projects on e-government and on corporate governance. The paper xx which I co-authored was presented at The xx Forum .

My research in development economics led me to study the distribution of income in my Master’s dissertation xx. By examining the root causes for the inequality in terms of economic system, economic growth and resource distribution, I studied the effects of such inequality on the country’s overall economic operation, economic growth and social stability. In addition, proposals were made concerning the possible government policies in abridging the urban-rural income disparities.

Upon completing my Master’s program in July 2003, I have been a research fellow at the Institute of xx. As a state-level research institution, xx is responsible for issuing the latest research findings in high-tech (electronic) industries to the government, the industrial communities and the general public. It is also responsible for industrial standards and regulations, policies, market surveys, product evaluations, enterprise assessments and for undertaking major research projects commissioned at national, provincial and ministerial levels. Our institute has been directly involved in framing and modifying China’s five-year plans and major industrial policies, providing consultations and guidelines in industrial structuring and the attraction of foreign investment for high-tech zones and economic development zones across the country.

As the youngest member and chief researcher of this government think-tank, I have undertaken a number of research projects primarily in industrial economics and have made major achievements. The most recent project is “xx“ sponsored by the xx and a full-length dissertation of the same title which I co-authored was published in a leading scholarly journal and won the sole first prize for foreign trade research achievements. When formulating China’s 11th Five-Year Plan for Information Industry, I was engaged in research projects like “xx”, a major project sponsored by xx. I was one of the framers of national industrial policies of digital TV as well as reviser of major national industrial polices designed to promote the development of integrated circuits and software.

My extensive research experiences also cover macro policy makings concerning key high-tech zones, economic development zones and regional planning. The projects include the revitalization of the old industrial bases in northeastern China, quickening the development of the western region, planning of the electronic IT industry development in xx City as well as in the xx region in Southern China. In the state-level project— xx, I was the chief author on the comparative international study of the evolution of social morphology and the mechanism of the motive force behind the evolution in various countries, and on the transformation research of China’s industrialization and informatization. Under this project, I was involved in two sub-projects—“xx Study” and “xx”. Currently, I am the team leader in two research projects—Research on xx and Research on xx. Both of these projects are sponsored by the xx.

Having participated in drawing such a substantial number of industrial polices, I wish to evaluate how those policies are producing their effects on the related industries. On the other hand, as the most rapidly expanding economy, China has been attracting unprecedented FDI from multinational companies. When I look for advanced research tools and methodologies to analyze such economic phenomena and the policy effects, I find myself in need of a more advanced education in economics. I believe that my in-depth knowledge of Chinese government’s decision-making processes of industrial policies and the country’s industrial conditions will be my greatest asset in undertaking your Ph.D. program. 

My motivation for your Ph.D. program also comes from an incident in last July. Several of my former classmates now working on their Ph.D. programs in economics and management at xx and xx came back to xx to undertake a research project on the xx sponsored by xx. Due to my connections with top government officials in the electronics industry, I made arrangements for their interviews with those officials and I also provided them with statistics of industrial clusters. I realized that the rest of the world is also intensely concerned about the current conditions and future trends of China’s industrial development. This indicates that, without incorporating the China case, the mainstream western models of industrial economics would be incomplete. I hope that, through my involvement in and contributions to your program, I can help make up for this inadequacy.

The purpose of the Ph.D. program in Economics at the xx School of Business at xx is to educate scientists who will advance the frontiers of economic knowledge through research, equipped with quantitative tools required for innovative solutions to economic problems. Your program seems precisely geared to my needs—to make up for my own inadequacy created by the lack of international perspectives in my economics research. By undertaking your program, I will be able to shift my perspective—not only as an insider but also as an outsider looking in.

Based on my academic and professional background, I would like to continue focusing on industrial economics and development economics. I will also further study Applied Econometrics to look for sophisticated analytical tools. I will concentrate on how the development of hi-tech industries can be used to promote the economic development in underdeveloped regions and how to use IT industry to effect transformations in traditional industries.

Now, standing at a pivotal point of my life, I look forward to my future. I can envision two roles for myself—an industrial professional researcher and a leading scholar on industrial economics and development economics in the academia. I wish that my future career can combine those two roles. With trainings from your program, I will be able to exert a greater and more positive effect on my country’s economic development as a whole.