On the evening of May 26, 2022, the third lecture "Cross Disciplines Statement" was grandly held online. Under the chairmanship of Professor Liu Feng, Professor Hong Yongmiao from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences was invited to give a lecture on the theme of "Econometrics: methodology of empirical research in economics". The enthusiasm of the teachers and students attending this session is unprecedented. Under the condition that the maximum number of participants is 500, the number of participants is full and the online activity remains high, which fully demonstrates the charm of cross disciplinary research and attracts scholars to participate.
Based on his own research experience, Professor Hong Yongmiao shared with participants from the aspects of economic research paradigm, what is econometrics, text data and socio-economic psychological measurement, and economic measurement based on estimation and prediction. First of all, Professor Hong Yongmiao combed the evolution of economic research paradigm for participants. From qualitative logical analysis to the introduction of mathematical reasoning into economic research to the combination of mathematical derivation and empirical research.With the development of technology, economic research has experienced an "empirical revolution" and evolved step by step to scientific research methods. Professor Hong Yongmiao pointed out that empirical research is more in line with scientific research paradigm in combination with Newton and Kepler research paradigms of natural science. At the same time, with the cross development of different disciplines, the research of economics has gradually formed a quantitative empirical method for causal analysis, that is, experimental economics, random control experiment, natural experiment, observation method and structural model. In recent years, with the rapid development of society, data has become a key factor of production. Therefore, new data processing methods such as artificial intelligence are changing the research paradigm of economics and humanities and social sciences.
Secondly, Hong Yongmiao introduced what econometrics is from different dimensions. From the perspective of development history, Frish first put forward the concept of econometrics in 1926, namely "econometrics". A close study of this word shows that econometrics has been an cross discipline since its birth, and it is a combination of quantitative analysis methods. Including the most commonly used "regression" analysis method in econometrics, which was first used to describe the concept of genetics. Professor Hong Yongmiao systematically described the role of econometric estimation parameters, testing economic theory and evaluation policy through several cases, such as consumption function, efficient market hypothesis, economic and public policy evaluation, Euler equation and dynamic asset pricing model.
Then, Professor Hong Yongmiao shared some frontier developments of econometrics, mainly covering text data and socio-economic psychological measurement. Professor Hong Yongmiao pointed out that most of the past research was based on structured data, but with the development of social media, the research data has gradually become diversified, and many unstructured data, such as thoughts, emotions, policy uncertainty, etc., can be included in the scope of research. The research methods of econometrics are also constantly updated. With the help of keyword frequency analysis, econometrics can better analyze the economic significance.
What’s more, Professor Hong Yongmiao introduced the research problems in the field of accounting and finance based on econometric estimation and prediction. Professor Hong Yongmiao cited several examples, such as the measurement of risk value and expected loss, the provision for loan impairment in bank credit risk management, the stress test of commercial banks and the fair value measurement of accounting, to illustrate that more and more economic measures are based on the estimation or prediction of econometric models.
Finally, Professor Hong Yongmiao had an exchange and discussion with online teachers and students, and the lecture was successfully concluded!
