Upcoming Events
Turing Research Talk
Apr 29, 2020, 2:00 - 3:00 PM
Center for Social Complexity Suite
Third floor of Research Hall.
Machine Learning for International Trade and Policy
Dr. Gopinath Munisamy
Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, USA
As part of the College of Science's Turing Research (http://turing.cos.gmu.edu/), Dr. Feras Batarseh will be hosting Dr. Gopinath Munisamy on Wednesday, April 29.
ABSTRACT: Predicting trade patterns is critical to decision making in the public and private domains, especially in the current context of trade disputes among major partners. Focusing on seven major agricultural commodities with a long history of trade, this talk will introduce a study that employed data-driven and deep-learning processes: supervised and unsupervised machine learning (ML) techniques – to decipher patterns of trade. The ML techniques were trained on data until 2010, and projections were made for following years, up to 2020. This talk will present results that show the high relevance of ML models in understanding trade patterns relative to traditional approaches, which are often subjective assessments or time-series projections. Moreover, supervised ML techniques quantified key economic factors, including policies, and determining agricultural trade flows over the past six decades.
Gopinath (Gopi) Munisamy is Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, USA, where he conducts research and teaching in International Trade and Agricultural Policy. He has published about 100 articles on agricultural trade and policy in professional journals, books, and policy briefs and other reports. Prior to joining UGA, he was the Director of the Market and Trade Economics Division of USDA’s Economic Research Service (2012-19) and a Professor at Oregon State University (1997-2012). Dr. Munisamy received a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota.