Research ideas

One problem I have is that I think up of too many interesting questions and things to do. Here are a few research ideas that I don't have time to really develop.

This is in addition to BoomCodeProjects and QuantLib projects.

• Extend methodology to look at other indicators of corruption in PRC investments

• Come up with a stochastic model for PRC interest rates
  • Lin and Zheng have come up with this paper [[1]]. Use the model in the paper to come up with a model to price interest rate swaps. Combine with

[[2]] this.

• Come up with a model for the behavior of the RMB
  • In particular use Rebanto's method of normal composition to decompose RMB

• Combine the above two to come up with a model for non-deliverable swaps

• Combine the above to have a model for PRC interest rate swaps

• Look for systematic changes in autocoorelation in Shanghai markets over time
  • The important thing is to look for an autocoorelation in the first phase of Shanghai/Shenzhen markets that aren't in the current set of market data

• Look for systematic changes in covariance between A/B/H/G shares over time

• Take the papers of Nicholas Lardy, which argues that the Chinese economy is dangerously overdependent on investment and the papers of the Goldman-Sachs research group, which argues that it isn't. Try to figure out what is going on. In particular, what are the consequences of certain policy choices if the data which underlies those choices in incorrect. Suppose we take Lardy's suggestions and the Chinese economy *isn't* overdependent on investment, what happens. Suppose we take Goldman-Sach's papers and the Chinese economy *is* overdependent on investment, what happens.
  • A lot of this depends on conflicting ideas over what chinese corporate profits are like. Goldman research says profits are booming. w:Nicholas Lardy says that the are not.
  • Here is another data point http://www.feer.com/articles1/2006/0611/free/p023.html
  • What someone can do is go through the articles by Lardy, Goldman, and the FEER article and pull out every statistics and every conclusion that they draw based on the statistic, and summarize it all in a chart.

• Investigate the Chinese steel industry

• Research universities in the lower Yangtze valley in the 19th century
  • Some of this might involve looking at distributions of current Chinese scientists

• Why are finance people optimistic about the Chinese economy and management people negative. For the negative view, read Yasheng Huang's work

• Was capital intensity in the PRC really increasing in the 1990's?

• A "one country, two constitutions" model for Mainland-Taiwan relations. This would be an elaboration of the "one country, different interpretations" principle and would involve creating a legal infrastructure in which both the 1947 ROC constitution and the 1982 PRC constitution are both considered valid.

• A "third lever" model of the Chinese economy.

• How to develop a "fund model" of Chinese state ownership

• Someone really need to do an oral history of the early 1990's and the first wave of online universities

• would be nice if there were some sort of page counter of read articles on wikiversity

• can you use REIT's to help peasants make use of the industrial development of farmland

• discuss the similarities and differences between the "guan shang he ban" enterprises of the late Qing-dynasty and the current set of listed companies see [Investing in Modern China] also relate to the Bureaucratic-Tributary Mode of Production and the Petty Capitalist Mode of Production of Hills Knowton
  • discuss the following proposition. The corporate enterprises of the late Qing dynasty were *successful* examples of economic development that were destroyed in the economic chaos that followed the fall of the Qing dynasty.

Other things I'm interested in

• comparative legislative procedure
• the geography of innovation