To further improve the writing skills and academic output of postgraduate students, the Faculty of Finance of City University of Macau held a series of guided lectures on academic paper writing on April 14, 2023, in the Cultural Centre of Taipa Campus. The lecture was delivered by Professor Yonghong Zhou, Course Coordinator of Graduate Program of the Faculty of Finance. In the lecture, Professor Zhou explained how to construct and analyze theoretical models, and took an economic growth model based on R&D as an example. Dean Adrian Cheung and postgraduate students of the Faculty of Finance attended the lecture.
Professor Zhou first introduced the types of mainstream research papers, which can be divided into theoretical models, empirical models, and theoretical and empirical combined models. Theoretical models need to extract rules from economic principles or phenomena to form the analytical thinking of "hypothesis - model construction - optimal solution - comparative static analysis or calibration". Empirical models follow the basic idea of "data - identification strategy - variable - regression or other quantitative analysis - result interpretation". Combined models include two categories: theoretical model with simple empirical evidence and empirical evidence with simple models.
Compared with the fun and intuitiveness of the empirical models, theoretical models are relatively abstract and need a certain mathematical basis. It is relatively difficult to construct a brand new theoretical model, and many papers are based on classical literature review, follow-up research and improvement. Taking the development of economic growth model as an example, Professor Zhou shared the development and innovation of endogenous growth theory from Solow, Ramsey and OLG model.
Lastly, Professor Zhou shared his thoughts on model building and analysis through one of his working papers, “Knowledge Intensive Business Services, Innovation, and Economic Growth”. At the end of the lecture, students actively posed questions and Professor Zhou answered in detail. This lecture provides a new way of constructing theoretical models and research for graduate students of the Faculty of finance, which will help them improve their academic research skills.