On the afternoon of 13 June 2019, the Faculty of Finance invited Professor Wei Xiahai to deliver a fascinating lecture on the selection of research topics.
Professor Wei is currently a distinguished professor, a doctoral supervisor, and a distinguished professor of the Minjiang Scholars Program at the Institute of Economic Development and Reform of Huaqiao University. In recent years, he has published dozens of papers in domestic and foreign authoritative and important journals such as the Economic Research Journal, the Management World, the Journal of World Economy, the Journal of Comparative Economics, and the China Economic Review, and has run many projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Social Science Fund of China, and the Humanities and Social Sciences Fund of the Ministry of Education. He has a wealth of scientific research experience and fruitful outstanding results.
Professor Wei started with the research on real life characteristics, and explained the issues requiring special attention during the selection of research topics, the sources, acquisition and use of macro data, the methodology of micro data estimation, the sources of paper titles, and the logical chain of empirical research. Professor Wei mainly introduced the characteristics of good research questions, focusing on the "interesting and/or important" feature. He enumerated interesting papers published in world-renowned journals, which aroused great interest from the teachers and students. Professor Wei shared his experience in the research and writing process, and explained how to write and publish excellent papers by talking about some interesting articles published by himself, such as "The Pain of Not Being Able to Breathe: Haze and Football".
Professor Wei patiently answered a series of questions raised by the teachers and students. Regarding the question whether "interesting" or "important" is more important, Professor Wei explained the "important" issues hidden behind "interesting" topics, encouraging everyone to combine the two and make full use of the current social environment advantage in China to publish "interesting and important" papers. The teachers and students found that they were deeply inspired by and benefited greatly from the lecture of Professor Wei.
