[SOLVED] Conduct and critique empirical work in economics and related fields

Econ 300 Group Project

Term Paper (Project) and its Abstract

As stated in the course description, the goal of this course is for you to gain the ability to conduct and critique empirical work in economics and related fields. A testimony to whether you have achieved this goal is to implement an empirical project with your team and write a short paper. You will ask an economic question, find relevant data, carry out empirical analysis, and write up a short-term paper.

You need to submit a short description (abstract) of your project by the deadline specified below in the list of important dates. Submit one abstract from each group by e-mail and CC to all group members. I will reply to this e-mail with comments. To make you’re your e-mail is not lost, please use e-mail subject “Econ 300 Abstract”. Please, limit the abstract to one paragraph. Motivate your project and mention which methods you plan to use, which data you plan to process, which results you expect, and which policy implications you may derive. I encourage students to discuss their topic with me any time when it is productive (before or after the abstract is due). The abstract will not be graded and is needed for the first feedback. Students are free to change their initial plan of work if needed upon a discussion with the professor.

Your project should contain the following parts:

Introduction: motivate your question of interest, shortly summarize which methods you used and which results you obtained

Data: Briefly describe your data. Define the outcome and main explanatory variables. Show a summary statistic table and, if needed, graphs summarizing important variables

Methodology: How do you answer the question raised in the introduction? Which econometrics method are you applying? What are the underlying assumptions? (For
example, if you use an OLS estimator, clearly describe your control and treatment groups, and the assumptions which make such estimation valid.) Admit limitations of your
methodology. For instance, unless you have data from a randomized experiment, a simple OLS model will likely fail to give you estimates that can be interpreted as causal under realistic assumptions. Estimates based on simple OLS are still fine for this course but you need to note the limitations.

Results: Present your results in well-formatted tables and figures. Place notes behind tables and figures to make them self-explanatory. Every table and figure should have a clear title. Interpret your results. Mention limitations of your results related to
limitations of methodology that you discussed above (for example, if you suspect your analysis suffers from omitted-variable bias but cannot do anything about it, acknowledge

it, and, if possible, discuss the direction of the bias. Admitting limitations improves the quality of your project). Discuss both the economic and statistical significance.

Conclusions: Summarize what the paper is about and your findings. Discuss policy implications if any exist. Mention possible steps you may want to undertake in the future to move this research forward.

The project report should be no more than10 pages double-spaced using 12-point font (figures and tables are excluded from this restriction).

 

Some Useful Data Sources

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUM): http://usa.ipums.org/usa/ Cleaned data here include the American Community Survey (ACS), Census data,
Current Population Survey (CPS), and National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).

NBER: http://www.nber.org/data/

Data that come with your textbook. Be careful that you do not use the same or very similar model that your textbook presents based on the same data. Such a paper will make no contribution to the literature. You need to show your independent work and demonstrate some contribution.

The full list of possible data sources would be too long. Students are expected to find data source based on their research interest.

What to do:
1.Abstract Due
2.Outline of your paper and preliminary regression result.