Statement of Purpose

Tung Dang
My motivation for getting a Ph.D. degree in economics stems primarily from my interest
in applying rigorous mathematical thinking to explaining important social phenomena. My
involvement in a number of research projects over the last few yearsmost notably one
pertaining to the economics of non-point source pollution sponsored by the National Science
Foundation (NSF)has channeled my attention toward empirical research in environmental
and development economics as well as their intersection. I believe that graduate training in
economics is an essential step for me to becoming a professional researcher.
Unlike many students who aspire to pursue graduate study in economics, I will be getting
my degree from an undergraduate institution that does not offer a formal program in either
economics or mathematics. I decided to enroll at Green Mountain College in the fall of 2011
partly because I was on a near full scholarship and mainly due to the colleges outstanding
emphasis on environmental education. At the end of my sophomore year when I realized that
my unique abilities in pure mathematics could be applied to solving important social problems, I designed my own major in economics and mathematics to stay at Green Mountain
while could still pursue my academic interests, despite not knowing how a non-traditional
educational background would influence my career. In hindsight, my decision has enabled me
to gain not only a rigorous understanding of the subjects but also the chance to be engaged
in numerous important research projects.
My first involvement in research took place at the beginning of my junior year, during
which I assisted Professor Mulder in using Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment to
estimate the colleges impacts in terms of resource use and environmental emissions throughout the life cycle of its purchased products and services. My first task was to design a
database that categorized the colleges thousands of financial transactions into different industries and incorporated corresponding ecological coefficients for each of them. I then spent
the next four months working on correcting data entriesa painstaking yet rewarding experience that taught invaluable lessons about working with data. Finally, I used bootstrapping
to contribute to the statistical analysis of the data and also recommended strategic actions
for the college to reduce its impacts based on the projects final results. Overall, the project
was a powerful demonstration of how matrix algebra made life-cycle assessment feasible on an
institutional level and how central economic analysis was to the formulation of policyboth
of which formed the very basis for my presentation at the Spring Meeting of the Northeast
Section of the Mathematical Association of America in May 2014 and later with Professor
Mulder at the XXth International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology in October.
As a result of Green Mountains influences upon my pro-environment behaviors, I was
inspired to look into the social benefits of higher education in inducing an individuals public good contributions. My senior thesis thus centers around the dynamics between income,
education, and pro-environment behaviors. One of many questions that I am interested in,
for example, is whether higher levels of education in developed countries induce people to
engage in pro-environment behaviors more than in less developed countries. To approach
the question, I use data from the third wave of the World Values Survey to develop an en-

vironmental index and analyze individuals choices of attitudes and behaviors with respect
to the environment in a random utility framework. Currently, I am working on refining my
empirical strategy to better address my hypotheses.
Last summer, I had the fantastic opportunity to work with a group of economists at
the University of Rhode Island in a NSF-sponsored research. The project used experimental
economics methods to study group cooperation in a non-point source pollution setting with
the presence of varying degrees of threshold uncertainty. We used a group fine mechanism
to frame our experiment as a public goods game and investigated the extent to which nonbinding communication and social learning could encourage cooperation. My tasks over the
summer were to understand the literature and program a laboratory-controlled experiment
using computer software. After running the pilot experiment and reviewing preliminary results, I proposed a few changes to the theoretical design of the experiment, i.e. establishing a
baseline treatment without uncertainty and re-parametrizing our setup to eliminate undesirable equilibria. As a result, I was invited to contribute to the final paper as a co-author and
we expect to submit it soon for journal review. I also presented my work at Green Mountain Colleges undergraduate research symposium this semester and am currently planning to
work with the colleges Sustainability Office to improve the design of Do It in the Dark, an
existing incentive mechanism that encourages Green Mountain students to save on-campus
energy and resource consumption.
Along with coursework and research projects, my work experiences also contributed significantly to my intellectual development. My job as an assistant to the I.T. Department
of Green Mountain College dramatically changed my programming and data management
skills. Most distinguishably, by using Microsoft SQL Server I successfully merged various
complex student information reports into a complete module in August 2013 to serve student orientation and constructed a cross-department accounting report to replace a broken
HTML module in the colleges database system in September 2014tasks that, to quote
my former supervisor, no one on campus has ever been able to accomplish over the last
five years. My position this year as an academic tutor, on the other hand, strengthens my
own understanding of various topics in mathematics and economics while at the same time
cultivates teaching abilities.
As I was looking for a Ph.D. program in economics that meets my interests, University of
Minnesotas Applied Economics Graduate Program stood out as the best candidate. In particular, I hope to further my understanding of the multifaceted relationship between natural
capital, ecosystem services and human well-being, a topic that has been the main focus of
my research projects at my undergraduate institution. This endeavor would benefit greatly
from Professor Steve Polaskys expertise in the interdependence between the economy and
natural ecosystems. In addition, I am also equally interested in working with Professor Paul
Glewwe due to his cutting-edge research in policy pertaining to education, inequality, and
poverty in developing countries, including Vietnam. I expect empirical analysis of economic
policy to be among the main venues of my contributions to the field of economics.
Upon successful completion of a doctorate degree, I plan to be a professor at a research
university to keep contributing to the field of economics. I am confident that my education
and research background has prepared me to meet the challenges of graduate coursework
in economic theory at the University of Minnesota, and I am determined to do my best in
order to translate my training into quality researches.