Statement of purpose

I am an international student from Japan. I would like to study in International Commerce and Policy program in George Mason University. I intend to acknowledge economic theory and international policy and to get experiences an academic research. I am interested in study international development, education economics, and international trade policy. In particular, through my study in undergraduate school, I found wealth inequality is one of main issues for education inequality. So, I realized that understanding economic is an eligible ability for policymakers and scholars because it is relevant to many fields of study including education and international development. Thus, I decided to pursue future studies in Economic policy. I believe that studying in ICP program enable me to think as economist and policymaker and it helps me to achieve my future goal.

I studied education policy in my bachelor degree in Japan. For my undergraduate thesis, I investigated among scholarship and tuition fee in public university in Japan in order to reduce inequality for chance to enroll the university. Through this study, I studied education economic and became interested in the economic because I found that many things relating to education policy can be determined by the economic so that it is inevitable to study economic in order to investigate the mechanism of education inequality. For example, income inequality tends to be inherited over the generation and it significantly relate to education inequality because poor family can not afford to pay the tuition. Moreover, inequality, specially income inequality and wealth inequality, became the top topic in the economic field since Pikkety published the book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” Also inequality entail to the aspect of international economics while it used to the problem in each nation because different aspects provide different thoughts such as inequality in developed country and developing country. Japan, which is the country I came from, also faces to the inequality and lower economic growth. Recently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is very controversial topic in Japan because it enables Japan to make a lot of money on the other hand it might increase income inequality. TPP produces the merit for developing countries in Asia from the global point of view. Therefore, as my academic goal, I would like to write a research paper in the field the international development or education economics or international trade policy t in ICP program.

George Mason University places at Washington DC area. This helps me to attend the conference about economic field and the event held in World bank. It enables me to acquire the knowledge about international development and to interact with people who works at cutting edge. ICP program provides many classes about Non profit organization, international trade policy, and international development and most professor are familiar with World bank, International Monetary Fund, and Asia Development Bank. In particular, the opportunity taking the class of professor Kenneth A. Reinert and professor Ramkishen S. Rajan would be helpful to achieve my academic goal. In fact, the article written by professor Reinert, “TRADE LIBERALIZATION AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN INDIA: A POISSON DISTRIBUTED-LAG ANALYSIS,” provide me the unique angle for exploring the literature about income inequality. Hence, this program is fitting me because it provides a lot of opportunity to interact someone is familiar to economic policy and it is covering both of the economic and public policy.

In addition, this program also helps me to achieve my career goal. I want to work at the international developing consultant or Non-profit organization in the future. The opportunity in the ICP program provide a lot of knowledge to deal with the practical economic problem. In fact, the student in ICP program witnessed for the significance of this program in his work. Moreover, I want to get a master degree because I want to apply some job opportunity what require the master degree such as United Nation. I believe that having the master degree in ICP program is useful to pursue my academic career.

I strongly want to enroll the International Commerce and Policy program in George Mason University. In my study in pathway program in INTO George Mason University, I have started to review the literature about income inequality in the US. I would like to develop this study in the ICP program. I believe this program help me achieve both academic and career goal. In addition, I would like to contribute to develop this field of study by writing the research paper.