Yi Fangyuan (Appointed in AY2025)

My starting point for research was encountering the European sovereign debt crisis in 2011. I became interested in international macroeconomics and international finance from simple questions such as why countries go bankrupt and why borrowing conditions differ significantly between countries even with the same level of government debt. In actual international financial markets, there are many phenomena that cannot be fully explained by conventional economic theory alone, such as the differences between domestic and foreign currencies, exchange rate fluctuations, and interest rate differentials between countries. My desire to understand "why these things happen" led me to pursue research in international macroeconomics.

The appeal of international macroeconomics lies in the fact that theory is constantly being challenged by actual market movements. To understand the vast and complex international markets, both theoretical models and data analysis are indispensable. The fascination of this field lies in being able to gain a deeper understanding of the structure of the global economy by clarifying how shocks ripple across borders through exchange rates and international capital flows.

In international macroeconomics, students learn how countries are connected and how the global economy moves through the interactions of trade, finance, and policy. Starting from familiar, intuitive questions, we think using theoretical models and understand their implications by comparing them with data and actual economic phenomena. Because market movements and policy responses ripple across borders, it is important to have a perspective that captures the overall connections rather than looking at just one country. In my classes, rather than memorizing answers, I want students to acquire the ability to connect intuition, theory, markets, and policy to formulate and think through their own questions.