Firstly, I would like to extend my gratitude to Mr. Mark W. Gallop for granting me this research award. This summer, I worked with my Macroeconomics professor, Dr. Francisco Alvarez-Cuadrado alongside Ph.D. student Shu Chen on the project “Economic Growth and the Agricultural Productivity Gap.” My aim was to create a dataset tracking agricultural value added per worker, which measures productivity in the farming sector across countries and across time.
The project uses sectoral breakdown of the economy to account for the vast income differences between countries across the world and ultimately gain a precise understanding of how economies grow. To make such comparisons from country to country however, we needed to adjust the figures into a common currency, so on top of aggregating data from difference sources, I also had to implement a set of mathematical steps to make sure the data agreed with itself. I started with existing high-level data from the United Nations and other sources, and began writing code to merge, sort, and transform it into the required specifications. Then, I explored the results, plotting the data to find correlations and trends between countries and their agricultural productivity. On first impression, the data confirms the body of literature’s claims about larger agricultural productivity gaps in poorer compared to richer ones and highlights some trends of those gaps increasing (non-agriculture because relatively more productive) as countries develop and reduce agriculture employment shares.
I had always been drawn to research as an honours student: the curriculum introduced an advanced models and theory that I was eager to put into practice, and the Arts Undergraduate Research Award (ARIA) presented the perfect opportunity to make that happen. My hope for the project was to explore this passion for economics while also gaining practical experience with data analysis, programming, and a closer rapport with my professor for a glimpse into the world of research and academia. My favorite part of the process was translating the mathematical formulas into actual implementations: a step that required creativity and problem solving, and I was able to give the project my own flair. For example, after writing code to perform the same actions multiple times, I thought to write custom helper functions to simplify and condense the process. At the same time, this presented challenges, as I wasn’t a programming expert and some of the problems had a learning curve, requiring debugging or rethinking my approach altogether. This was also my first time writing code and creating figures for an academic project, which comes with its own standards for reproducibility and clarity.
ARIA was instrumental in advancing my career path and academic trajectory. Having solid research experience as an undergrad is an asset that opens many doors by allowing me to showcase technical skills such as programming and academic capability alike. For example, I can showcase hands-on research experience while applying to graduate school for economics and have a tangible project with files and visuals to talk about in interviews for professional roles like research analyst or data scientist. Further, the financial support from Mr. Mark W. Gallop’s award allowed me to stay in Montreal over the summer and commit my full attention to the project, ultimately enhancing my experience by being close to my team, attending meetings and events in Montreal like a research workshop, and better leveraging McGill’s resources as a student.
