- Columbia University
- People
- United States of America
About Joachim Jose Mendoza Rillo
Aspiring economist and researcher at Columbia with experience spearheading internationally recognized non-profits through collaborations with National Geographic, UNESCO, the Asian Development Bank, UNICEF USA, and the Philippines Department of Education.
Recent Comments
One of the biggest challenges I have faced for my project was the availability of information surrounding my original topic. I came into the program wanting to research the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and how it negatively impacts Pakistan with high interest rates, burgeoning debt, and unstable ownership. However, by the time I began researching, I could not find any data available on the topic. Most, if not all, information available was from media outlets rather than academic/government sources. So, this challenge shaped my research by changing the focus of my project. Now, I am studying how China's history of foreign policy has led to the Belt and Road Initiative (the program of which CPEC falls under the umbrella of) and what threats the problem creates. In this new topic, CLIO has helped me find numerous sources from the Chinese and other foreign governments that allow me to source necessary data.
Hi Hassan!
I relate with the challenge of finding information availability on my research—it is often difficult to find coverage on every single subsidy case. Consequently, I also took a similar mitigating approach by broadening my focus and searching for the parent company instead of the specific company name.
Best of luck with your research :)
Issues that come with scavenging media coverage for over 1800 subsidy cases are naturally abound to arise. Currently, one of my biggest problems is: how do I optimize my search within the LexisNexis database in order to ensure that I don't accidentally mis-label subsidy cases that may actually have media coverage as "no coverage"? I'm countering this problem through a common searching procedure that makes me narrow all search categories under "jobs" to the parent company, the state, and when applicable, the name of the subsidy program. This has been extremely effective for me.
Goodjobsfirst.org offers a database of subsidies and allows me to double check whether I'm searching for the right subsidy. Sometimes, I may have the exact same subsidy program under the same state for a company but the subsidy may occur in a different county, so this website is very useful for me to double check.
Hey Evan,
I'm particularly excited about the significance of your research in the NLP community. One question I'd have would be: fallacious can, at times, be a vague term; how can programming determine which arguments are fallacious? Consequently, how would you plan to alleviate this issue through your code?
Super excited to see the rest of your research!
Based on my current progress, I expect that my research will show that media coverage can be an effective accountability mechanism for firms to meet their job creation target when given a subsidy. I plan to help my professors finish the raw data this summer for our research, then potentially help with the paper if possible.
My research is extremely important in investigating whether firms are actually committed to ESG goals. Often, there is a negative portrayal of the media. Consequently, it is important to evaluate whether media coverage can actually bring a positive effect in holding firms accountable to create jobs for the communities around them.
One of the ethical issues in my research surrounds the issue of displacing workers and creating unemployment. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, although disastrous for Pakistan's economy because of high interest rates and ownership seizure, does provide jobs. There are many positions open through the Gwadar Port, highways, power plants, and the other infrastructure the initiative has created through out the country. And, to reduce the detriment CPEC brings to Pakistan's economy, my research will center around restricting Chinese involvement through ownership transfers and domestic infrastructure investments. Although, because Pakistan's infrastructural prowess is not at the same level as China's, we can expect some scale of downsizing - which may bring unemployment, temporary economic stagnation, and other issues.
Influenced by the ethical issue of creating economic stagnation by nationalizing foreign infrastructure projects, I have recently began considering an alternative viewpoint in my investigation. Under this lens, instead of gaining ownership of these projects, Pakistan can benefit from CPEC by campaigning for more favorable loan agreements. These can ensure that at a micro-level, at the very least, job security is not threatened due to a consistent presence of a revenue source - China.
Hey Hassan!
You bring up a good point with the ethical issue of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. I'd also like to point out that, empirically, these sorts of agreements which provide small benefits with significant long-term consequences often create an unhealthy codependency culture which can hinder a country's development in the long-term.
Best of luck with your project :)
My task of research under my PIs involves mostly database scavenging for subsidy media coverage, so I believe there are not many ethical issues I currently have to grapple with. However, one potential concern in the overall research project we are doing includes an ethical side for firms; do they ethically use the subsidies given by the government for ESG goals (eg. increasing employment within the region, committing to environmentally friendly production, etc.)?
Furthermore, a potential ethical concern is the intent behind media—journalism can often be used for ulterior motives such as political campaigns, and it is important that I keep that in mind as I note key numerical details from articles. A way I'm counteracting this is looking for multiple articles which cover the same subsidy in order to gain a more nuanced perspective.
My research project involves collecting data first BEFORE exploring various viewpoints. Economics at the academia level involves extremely heavy math, making it very logic-oriented and, at times, not open to alternative viewpoints. However, I do plan to consider alternate viewpoints as I work with my PIs to explore the next steps of this paper once the raw data has been sorted out.
I think that the interdisciplinary nature of Laidlaw is helpful as different research projects will require different methodologies; for example, humanities will most likely be more qualitative than the quantitative nature of STEM research. Consequently, as someone who is researching economics—which settles in the awkward in-between of humanities and STEM— I can learn methods from my humanities-oriented peers as well as methods from my STEM-oriented peers and possibly apply it to my future economics research projects.
My main job under my faculty is to work on scavenging for media coverage in Lexis Nexis. Thus, I anticipate one of my main challenges to be how to efficiently find media coverage on each individual subsidy case. Another challenge may be efficiently executing one of my other main tasks, which is identifying the type of media coverage; nowadays, journalism and political coverage get conflated so it may be hard for me to distinguish between the two.