编者按 EDITOR'S NOTE
"The green mountains are alone and no one sees them, and the sound of bamboo is wide after the rain. "On the road of cultivating academic research, Peking University Development Institute not only attaches importance to the accumulation of academic achievements, but also pays more attention to the cultivation of educational feelings and exploration spirit. Today, we will approach a young scholar who has both profound academic background and full of educational feelings, Mr. Xing Yiqing. His academic journey and deep insight into economics at home and abroad constitute his unique academic perspective and educational mission.
Teacher introduction
Xing Yiqing is a tenured associate professor of economics at Peking University Development Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University in 2016 under the supervision of Professor Matthew Jackson, who worked at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.
研究兴趣主要集中于：社会与经济网络、微观经济理论、市场和机制设计、发展经济学、政治经济学等；论文发表在 PNAS，Journal of the European Economic Association，RAND Journal of Economics，Journal of Political Economy：Microeconomics，Theoretical Economics，European Economic Review和《经济研究》、《经济学（季刊）》等国内外顶尖学术期刊。 邢亦青老师曾受邀在剑桥、耶鲁、普林斯顿、芝加哥、NBER等顶尖院校、机构和会议进行学术报告；担任Nature、PNAS、AER、Econometrica、QJE、MS、JASA等国际期刊的匿名审稿人。 现开设《社会与经济网络》、《社会与经济网络导论》等课程。
Educational experience
Ms. Xing Yiqing's study journey is full of exploration and discovery. When he entered the undergraduate program, he chose mathematics as his major due to his personal interest and development space. Since Jingbi was a very popular double degree program at Peking University at that time, and the background of the teachers of the college was also very attractive, with the purpose of improving the literacy of liberal arts and the thirst for knowledge, the teachers chose economics as their second major in the second year of undergraduate. Mr. Xing said that he was actually interested in many fields such as computer science, economics, and mathematics during his undergraduate years, and it was his exchange experience at Tsinghua University in Taiwan in his junior year that made him decide to continue studying for a master's degree in economics at the National Development Institute.
At the Department of Mathematics at Tsinghua University in Taiwan, he met a game theory professor who was passionate about both academics and life, and he was deeply touched by the attitude and mental state of this professor, and Xing realized that even at an older age, maintaining curiosity and thirst for knowledge is very valuable. This discovery also prompted him to decide to shift his future study and research direction to economics.
In addition, Mr. Xing also joined the land group of Professor Zhou Qiren and conducted research in Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, Chengdu and other cities, accumulating rich research experience, so he is also very interested in rural issues, land issues and reforms. In the process of research, Mr. Zhou Qiren once said: "People must have a first-hand picture, that is, they must have a first-hand observation and situation of the economy and the world", which made Mr. Xing particularly impressed, and made him pay more attention to the combination of research problems and economic reality in the future.
Group photo with Professor Lin Yifu at the master's graduation ceremony
When he decided to go to Stanford University for further study, he was not completely sure of his research direction. He entered the PhD program with an interest in theoretical economics and a curiosity about practical problems. Stanford's academic environment and exchanges with leading scholars in various fields further broadened his horizons, which eventually led him to choose socioeconomic networks and micro-theory as his main areas of study. The teacher said that at present, it seems that this is a direction that I am particularly proud of and interested in, because the socio-economic network is a tool that can be applied to all directions related to the economy, and the dialogue and exchange with different fields also open my horizons.
Group photo with Professor Ken Arrow at Stanford University in 2016
In addition, the teacher also mentioned that Stanford's deepest impression on him is "breadth": in addition to the micro-theory that he is interested in, there are world-class scholars in almost all disciplines of economics in the department, and his supervisor Dr. Matthew Jackson has repeatedly emphasized the need for breadth of knowledge. Therefore, although the importance of depth cannot be ignored, teachers always feel that the ultimate height that determines a person's vision is actually the breadth of cognition.
Finally, the teacher believes that the inspiration accumulated during his time at Stanford is also very important, because the study, presentation, and participation in discussions of professional courses in each semester can bring him to the forefront of the field, and many of the research he has conducted is also based on the inspiration of his studies, and his study and research experience at Stanford is full of exploration and growth, which has also had a profound impact on his subsequent academic career.
Group photo with doctoral supervisor Matthew Jacson
Career development
Mr. Xing's career path began with his early exposure and deep identification with the academic world. Because his grandmother and grandfather were both university teachers, he experienced a free campus environment when he was a child, and grew up in a family with a strong academic atmosphere, which also nurtured his desire for intellectual exploration and appreciation of academic freedom.
The teacher said that scholars can always maintain spiritual freedom and continue to be full of curiosity about the world, and he can't think of any other positions in which he can still maintain his childlike innocence and desire to explore at the age of sixty or seventy, so the pure spiritual world of scholars will always make people feel particularly precious. This early influence played a decisive role in his choice to pursue the teaching route. For Mr. Xing, choosing to become a scholar and teacher is not only a matter of career choice, but also the inevitable result of realizing personal ideals and pursuing intellectual freedom.
Prior to returning to NDRI, Mr. Xing had seven years of research teaching experience at Johns Hopkins University and served as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Cambridge, which also added a rich international perspective and academic depth to his career development. Although there are a wide range of academic opportunities overseas, Mr. Xing said that it is only a matter of time before he returns to China, and the reason can be summed up in two words: feelings. The National Development Institute has always been a home in the hearts of the teachers, and the learning experience and friendships gained here are very good times for me to look back on to this day. Even during his work abroad, he would come back to see him during the winter and summer vacations almost every year.
The teacher also shared an interesting story with us: after graduating and working overseas, I once returned to China and met an academic affairs teacher in Langrun Garden, and the teaching teacher asked him: "What level are you, why haven't you graduated yet, I feel that you have been here for a long time, right?", the teacher smiled and said that maybe he appeared too often that the teaching teacher felt that he had never left. Therefore, for Mr. Xing, it is a natural thing to return to the National Development Institute, and feelings must always return to their roots. Now standing on the podium, the teacher feels that he is not only facing students, but also his own juniors and sisters, which is very different from the previous teaching experience abroad. For Mr. Xing, returning to Guofa is not only a new stage of his career, but also a destination of "feelings".
2018年在北京大学和芝加哥大学前校长Hugo教授、Beth Sunshine教授夫妇合影
Research work
Prof. Xing's research interests are wide-ranging, including microeconomics, market mechanisms, and development economics, but he is particularly interested in the study of social networks. Social networks are the study of relationships between individuals. According to Xing, economics first studies individual choice, then develops into two-party interactions such as firm-consumer or game theory, and then multi-individual interactions, which is the core of social network research. Social network research emphasizes the heterogeneity of relationships between different individuals, exploring how these relationships affect economic behavior and decision-making. For example, in the study of financial networks, the connections and locations of different institutions affect the stability and risk propagation of the entire network.
There are two characteristics of this field – one is "new" and the other is "wide". New means that this field is one of the fastest-growing fields in economics and even social sciences in the last decade or twenty, and a large number of new problems, data, and methods have emerged; research and teaching in China are still in their infancy, and there is still a huge amount of space. Broad means that social networks are extremely widely used, covering almost all fields of economics, and even many disciplines such as management, society, and international relations. Therefore, from the perspective of social networks, Professor Xing can use theoretical, empirical, experimental and other methods to provide new tools and inspiration for economics and other disciplines, not only to do important research, but also to learn new problems and new phenomena in other disciplines, and satisfy his curiosity as a scholar.
Professor Xing believes that in a society with such an important relationship as China, the study of social networks is particularly important. The network of relationships in Chinese society is not just a social phenomenon, but is deeply rooted in economic activities and decision-making processes. Historically, all kinds of informal networks, such as family, community, neighborhood, and hometown relationships, have been indispensable pillars in the functioning of Chinese society, and now students are looking for jobs, internships, and internal referrals, which are actually the result of using social networks. Therefore, Xing's research focuses on revealing the role of social networks in individual decision-making and economic development.
Professor Xing also pointed out the development space of current social network research in China: although social networks will have huge applications in China, there are relatively few studies on China. China is also one of the best testing grounds for social network research: our country has a vast territory and is developing rapidly, so different stages of development will be seen at different times in the same region, and conversely, different regions at the same time will also be at different stages of development. This provides a wealth of resources for exploring how social networks influence opportunities for people to embrace formal markets in the process of development, and how the development of formal market opportunities in turn influences and determines the evolution of social network relationships. In the literature, more emphasis is placed on the relationship between informal institutions and formal systems that replace each other and eliminate each other, but in reality, the two often coexist, and the relationship is richer, and there are complementary aspects and co-evolution. This perspective is of great help to our understanding of economic development and institutional arrangements.
In addition, the teacher also emphasized the application of social networks in the digital economy and platform economy. The teacher pointed out that one of the most prominent characteristics of the digital economy is network externality, that is, the utility of consumers' use of products and services is affected by the use of other people. This includes not only the use of products and services such as cloud services and social media, but also the spillovers of behavior such as peer effect and cooperation. Furthermore, with the widespread use of social media, many economic behaviors have also been endowed with network externalities: even the most traditional consumption behaviors such as eating, drinking, housing and transportation, when people share their experiences with each other on Moments and Reviews, they also have network externalities.
The traditional discussion of network externalities is mainly based on the social aggregation level, but in reality, there is heterogeneity in many dimensions of the externality between people—for example, the degree of influence and reference group of each person is often different, and the impact on others can also be different. Social network analysis tools provide perspectives and tools to characterize this heterogeneity, and help us understand network externalities and their economic and social impacts more deeply and accurately. In addition, with the development of the digital and platform economy, many consumption and labor activities have shifted from offline to online, and a large number of new research questions and data have emerged, and the role of network analysis has become more and more important.
Teaching experience
As a relatively new research field, there is a big gap in social network analysis in domestic teaching. After returning to his alma mater, Mr. Xing opened new courses such as "Social and Economic Networks" and "Introduction to Social and Economic Networks" for graduate and undergraduate students. This should be the first time that this research field has appeared in the classroom of economics and management at Peking University and even other sister universities.
The teacher said that it is a very happy thing to have a discussion and exchange with the younger brothers and sisters to teach them with the talents of the world. In addition, the course is an extension of one's own research. On the one hand, systematically organizing a research field into a curriculum requires a lot of thinking and re-learning about this research field that interests oneself, and at the same time, because social network is a typical interdisciplinary field, teachers also hope to emphasize the combination of network analysis perspective and different fields in the course, and explore the wide range of application scenarios of this perspective. Therefore, the two courses are not only very suitable for their own interests, but also provide opportunities for further communication and cooperation with students from different professional backgrounds, which is a very gratifying thing for teachers.
Finally, the teacher also shared his insights on years of study and research with the students: for doctoral students, they should not only dig deep into their professional fields, but also cherish their thirst for extensive knowledge when their thinking is most active, and avoid turning "doctor" into "fine master"; Being an academic is not just a profession, it also represents curiosity and a higher degree of freedom, to communicate with people in different fields, to listen to seminars in other fields, these activities may not be very beneficial in the short term, but often have a profound impact on our height in the long term. For undergraduates, teachers recommend not to be limited to a certain direction or subject. At the same time, no matter what stage of study we are in, it is always very important to communicate and interact with our peers, because classmates will be our lifelong companions.
Finally, teachers also encourage everyone to take the initiative to communicate with teachers, sometimes when they are students, they are sometimes embarrassed to interact with teachers, thinking that this will delay the precious time of teachers, but after becoming teachers, teachers often look forward to communicating with classmates - it is a very exciting thing to discuss academics and explore cooperation opportunities with a group of very bright young people, and it is also one of the most valuable assets of the teacher's work.
Contribution | Gao Juanxia, Zhong Ruixuan, and Cai Yujie are organized according to the content of the interview
Typography | Han Bin