Deliverables

Overall grade: A

Project Duration: 10 Weeks

The accompanying paper is posted on the UC system repository, eSchorlarship. The policy essay can be accessed here.

At UC Center Sacramento, students are encouraged to complete a policy research paper and a poster to communicate their findings. I found this project to be one of the most impactful learning experiences during my undergraduate candidature.  My experience at the center increased my interest in research and in having a career in academia.

The 10-week horizon for hypothesis forming,  data gathering, visualizing, analysis, and communication imposed a great constraint on the research topics and my ambitions for this undertaking (I did not realize this until the 2nd half of the quarter). I face lots of difficulties when aggregating data from the county levels due to missing annual reports from many Agricultural Commissioners' Offices. Additionally, there are some discrepancies in CDCFA's yearly reports (likely due to rounding and aeration methods) which I want to explore further, but couldn't due to the deadlines. With these limitations in data reliability,  along with the limitations of the experiment design (pre/post), I did not establish any causal mechanism in the paper.

If I could change this paper, I would opt for a "stronger" design to have a clearer lens to study the labor market. I will also look at the elasticity of labor for agricultural operations, wages, and the use of foreign workers in the study, just as I previously planned.  Moving forward, I hope to use these missed opportunities as motivation to pursue future research project prospects.

Overall,  this was my introduction to quantitative social science. Being at the center and having conversations with active researchers about their research during the speaker series inspired me to strengthen my ability to interpret and apply data to real-world issues. I intend to use the experience accumulated during my short stay at the center and the heart of California legislation as a foundation to expand my technical capabilities further

Overall grade: A

Project Duration: 1.5 weeks 

The prompt for this project is simple: create a scenario where simulation can be productively implemented. As this is a summer class (5 weeks), the project duration was two weeks.

 While many of my peers chose not to deviate from the supply chain model, I capitalized on this open-ended prompt to apply simulation to another aspect of the curriculum. In this project, I created the efficient frontier and the Capital Allocation Line based on the basket of assets from our assumptions. I then used the Modern Portfolio Theory to derive the minimum-variance portfolio,  optimal with short and optimal without short portfolios. I used the historical and Monte Carlo approaches to VaR analysis to evaluate the performance of the portfolios.

If I have a chance to revisit this project, I would include some qualitative assessments and investment theses in the final report. I also like to spend more time on the literature to develop more realistic simulation parameters. I should also consider the tax implications for a global investment strategy.

I am proud of how the slides turned out, my presentation, and the grade I received given the short horizon. I incorporated photos I took during my time in Singapore to introduce some self-elements to the relatively generic slides.

I am aware of more efficient methods in R using the Quantmod and PortfolioAnalytics packages, but the module's preferred software is Excel for analysis, so that is what I used.

Overall grade: A-

Project Duration: 2 Weeks 

In this project, we have to find properties on the market and derive an investment strategy. The assumed budget is from mm$1.0 to mm$2.0 USD. A sample model is available here. 

I worked with my peers from UCR and two exchange students from Università Bocconi on this project. The diverse team composition inspired us to be more adventurous with our location assumptions and strategy.