Rachel Li Wah NGAI
Rachel graduated from BSc in Economics in HKUST and went to University of Pennsylvania to peruse her PhD degree. She started working in the London School of Economics since 2001 and is now Reader of the Department of Economics.
Rachel got her research ideas from daily life. She quoted how she came up with her initial research, as a high school tutor in Hong Kong, her salary was higher than a relative who was a MD in PRC then, then a bigger jump of US wages when she arrived there to study in the mid-90s. This remained in her mind for a long time, her PhD thesis, “Barriers and the Transition to Modern Growth” was a result of the life event observation above.
Her main research area is still on economic growth and structural transformation, of how economic growth achieved in countries transformed from agricultural to manufactural and then service economy; about the difference of steady state of economies in different stage of growth, and relations of the growth rate of different countries according to their unique political situation, climate and adaption in innovation, eg. how late developer like PRC grow so fast.
Rachel sees herself very much as an applied macroeconomist, she is motivated by macroeconomic facts, she writes theory but is motivated by data, and conduct quantitative work to investigate if the theory she posted is relevant to explain the data. Her way to approach a question in research is to look at the fact, thinks about the key reason, write down a model, put discipline on the model by using data, and check if the model can predict something that is meaningful for the data.
Rachel is among the first batch of students who took PhD courses in her UG study. She did so in HKUST and University of Pennsylvania when she was an UG exchange student. She has given two seminar courses for postgraduate students in HKUST since 2011, so she is in a good position to compare student now and then. She found that students nowadays are more confident, proactive and take a more challenge position than to just accept what they are taught.
Rachel is married with a son of 4, the age when he is physically and mentally active, he learns fast and asking questions all the time. She describes her life as busy but happy. While she can only do e-shopping, she envies Hong Kong mothers that they can have live-in domestic helper and family support easily. Now she hardy has any personal life, leisure, or even sleeping time. A bowl of spicy noddle (Rachel is from Sichuan) on her way home is her de-stressor and reward for the day.