Oxford University Summer School on Economic Networks hosted HSE doctoral student

In June 2017  Zaruhi Hakobyan, a graduate first year student of the HSE Doctoral school in economics, took part in the Summer School on Economic Networks, organized by the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University. The summer school and the Faculty of Economic Sciences sponsored Zaruhi Hakobyan's  travel and accommodation expenses.

Alumna 2016 of the Faculty of Economic Sciences Master Program Economics: Research program Zaruhi Hakobyan participated in advanced summer program in economic networks in Oxford. Read her reflections on the event. 

This June I took part in a Summer School on Economics Networks hosted by the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. My participation was partially funded by the Faculty of Economic Sciences, HSE, Moscow and Summer school organizers; together, they paid my airfare, visa and my accommodation costs. 

The summer school in Oxford was very well designed: we received reading assignments, lecture topics and essential information about Oxford prior to our arrival. This allowed us to build from basic network concepts to more advanced modelling topics, and facilitate interaction and learning between participants. I am confident that this school will lead to new research inspiration, exciting collaborations and lasting friendships. Every evening there was some social event.

After the lectures, the participants had the opportunity to discuss various questions with professors in a casual and friendly atmosphere. Among renowned panel of experts were Prof Sanjeev Goyal and Prof Vasco Carvalho from the University of Cambridge, and Prof Mihaela van der Schaar, Prof Doyne Farmer and Prof Peter Grindrod from the University of Oxford. They readily suggested us reading materials, ways in which we could develop our research and research methods that could give us best results.

After each lecture, we had tutorials where we learned working with networks and visualizing them. Participants was divided into 10 groups and worked together during these tutorials.  All groups took part in the competition: What can economic complexity offer? Each group was assigned a country (my group country was Cambodia) and our group use data Atlas of Economic Complexity (http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/) to identify which good was produced in Cambodia, what nearby and ambitious product we can offer policy makers. Our group won the competition.

Now, the event is over, but every participant has access to the conference materials, and codes for programming are available now as well. This is a very convenient way to revisit what we have learnt and analyze it once again.