Chunrong Ai, Presidential Chair Professor of CUHK-Shenzhen, has been named Fellow of the Econometric Society. Professor Ai is one of the few Chinese economists to be named to this highest authority of the Society. Candidates to become Fellows shall be nominated each year by general members, existing Fellows or by the Fellows Nominating Committee. To be eligible for such nomination, the person must have published original contributions to economic theory or to such statistical, mathematical, or accounting analyses as having a definite bearing on problems in economics.

Chunrong Ai

Presidential Chair Professor, CUHK-Shenzhen;

Shenzhen Institute of Data Economy

Vice-President of Shenzhen Institute of Data Economy

Founded in 1930, the Econometric Society is the most prestigious learned society in the field of economics, with a world-wide membership. The majority of Nobel Prize winners in this field are Fellows of the Society. Its main object is to promote studies that aim at a unification of the theoretical-quantitative and empirical-quantitative approach to economic problems and that are penetrated by constructive and rigorous thinking similar to that which has come to dominate in the natural sciences. The main activities of the Society are the publication of a journal, Econometrica; the publication of a monograph series in collaboration with the Cambridge University Press; and the organization of scientific meetings in six regions of the world (including a World Congress every five years).

Professor Ai's important contributions to semiparametric and nonparametric models and estimation are the main reason for his election. His first important contribution is the efficient estimation of generalized nonlinear regression models, which was accomplished in the 1990s. His research provided the construction of score functions that satisfy the Neyman orthogonality condition. The Neyman condition, which allows the asymptotic distribution of the second step estimates to be unaffected by the estimation of the nonparametric function in the first step, is a recent research focus at the intersection of econometric modeling and machine learning. Another significant contribution of Prof. Ai is the efficient estimation of models with conditional moment restrictions. The simple and effective set of methods provided by him and his collaborators allows easy integration of a priori information and conditional constraints (e.g., monotonicity, convexity, additivity, non-negativity, etc.) from economic theory. Recently, Prof. Ai's research has focused on Treatment Effects Model and is dedicated to providing a unified framework for its efficient estimation.

Professor Ai’s primary research interests are in the area of econometrics, empirical industrial organization, empirical finance, and Chinese economy. His research outputs are published in the reputable scholarly journals. He is also an active reformer of economics education in China.