HANDBOOK
For
ECONOMICS
2000-2001
Contents
  1. Goals
  2. Requirements
  3. Proposal
  4. Preface & Postscript
  5. Timeline
  6. Grading
  7. Finding a Topic
  8. Suggested Readings
  9. IPE Reference Guide
  10. IPE Reviewer Guide

Introduction

The first thing you will notice is that this is not simply a guide on writing a senior thesis paper for credit in a 2-hour 400-level class. In fact, there are numerous things we expect from you this year, only one of which is an original coherent argument paper.

We expect you to be an independent learner. Independence means that you are conducting self-directed research - you are not simply doing the work your advisor tells you to do, but going beyond, leading, trying new ideas , yet seeking advice and input from them. Independence must not be confused with isolation. It is no accident that scholars live and work in a community (college). The reason for this is that intellectual achievement requires a conversation. You need to interact with others. Talk to each other about your projects. Talk to us about your ideas. The responsibility for your learning rests with you; we are here merely to facilitate the process.

One thing you will learn during this year is that you will want and need help. The one sure way to get help is to give help. There are several places where we, the department of economics, want your help. One example is Issues in Political Economy - the student journal we are publishing along with Mary Washington College. Another example is helping your peers. There will be several instances where you and your peers will make oral presentations to the department, at SURF, or at the Eastern Economics Association meetings. So, support your peers. Show up to their presentations, and they will show up to your presentations. This is the behavior we expect out of good academic citizens.

We think that this is going to be a valuable, year-long learning experience.

1. GOALS OF THE SENIOR YEAR

Life is full of problems that are murky, messy and maddening. We like to refer to these as ill-structured problems. People who manage to solve ill-structured problems will find success in life. We can all agree that one goal of a college education is to prepare students for life. Thus, we feel like we have an obligation to teach you in such a way so that you learn how to solve ill-structured problems. (Lilly, Redington and Tiemann, 1999)

If you are to succeed in this endeavor, you will need to develop certain Values, Knowledge, and Skills.

VALUES

Those who manage to make sense of ill-structured problems have what we like to call

Adaptive Persistence: "being able to overcome miscalculation and mistakes and take advantage of serendipitous events outside of one's field of vision" (Lilly, Redington and Tiemann 1999)

People who possess adaptive persistence are

Open-minded (willing to look at the problem from different viewpoints)

Curious (questioning, seeking answers)

Intellectually honest and brave (confident to take a stand when the evidence is present or change a position when the evidence is not)

Independent

Dogged

KNOWLEDGE

Those who are able to successfully tackle ill-structured problems:

Display an integrated understanding of economics

Use that knowledge to create new knowledge

The ultimate goal of a capstone course is for you to pull everything you have learned in your economics classes into a year-long project. This project will seek to address a complex economic problem that could not otherwise be properly approached. If anyone could do it, an economics major would be meaningless. If we wanted you to do just another term paper, we'd just make you take another upper-level course in another subject. But, that's not the idea.

The point is for you to tackle a problem that is beyond the scope of any other economics course topic. It also means that the solution to your problem is not something that you can find in a textbook, or even in a series of other people's research. We do not want you to simply replicate or summarize what others have done on the topic (though that is a first step in this learning process). We are looking for you to create new knowledge. Of course, this endeavor is not properly done in a vacuum. As a society, we learn from the previous work of others, and extend the knowledge base from there. That is why it is important that you begin with a solid understanding of the field of economics. That is the knowledge that has been passed down to you. You are to take it from there!

SKILLS

Finally, the vital skills that people who are successful at solving ill-structured problems include:

Critical Thinking - the ability to identify key aspects of an issue and reach a conclusion using appropriate methods and standards of evaluation Thoma (JEE 1993). They are able to (Ennis, 1987):

  1. Focus, identify and formulate the question
  2. Identify and formulate appropriate criteria for evaluation
  3. Analyze arguments (identify assumptions, structure and conclusions)
  4. Judge the credibility and appropriateness of sources, literature
  5. Use both inductive (theory) and deductive reasoning (data)
  6. Draw appropriate inferences

The ability to communicate their argument effectively both orally and in their writing

There is an inherent relationship among all of these. The ability to think critically can be displayed in effective reading, writing and speaking. As we practice any of these skills, we are using and honing our ability to reason. Improving our writing is the single most effective way to improve our capacity to reason. It allows time for us to thoroughly consider our problem and carefully construct our argument.

Finally, all of this requires that you read carefully and critically. As you have probably seen already in your upper-level classes, reading is difficult. It is both hard and important for us to be able to pull out important information from an article, book, etc…How many times have you heard someone else talking about a book, movie or news article and thought to yourself, "How did they get so much out of that? I didn't see that." It takes practice.

2. REQUIREMENTS FOR SENIOR YEAR

Build an original coherent argument (research) paper

An original coherent argument paper is one in which you are seeking to create new knowledge. A coherent argument is one in which the claim (thesis statement, question, however you may prefer to characterize it) is supported or refuted by using both theory and data.

Basically, regardless of what labels you prefer to put on the components, all research can be characterized by the following process:

This is different than researching what others (authorities) have to say. You are intending to do something that (to your knowledge) no one has done in exactly the same way as you. This may sound like a tall order. It is. But it is something a graduate in economics is expected to be able to do.

In addition to the paper, throughout your senior year you are expected to

Attend mandatory meetings - we will have a few in the fall, and another couple in the spring, including spring presentations. All meetings will be in Long 106 unless you hear otherwise.
Fall:

Sept 8 @2:30p – initial senior meeting

Sept. 29 @2:30p
Oct. 26 @ 4:00p
Nov. 9 @ 4:00p – TER presentation

Spring: TBA

You are also strongly encouraged to attend the LSB seminar presentations both during the fall and spring semesters. Several of your economics professors will be presenting their research. This gives you a valuable opportunity to learn more about the research process.
Submit a 2 page written proposal and defend it orally. This must be done bythe first week ofspring semester.
Enroll in ECO 498 in the FINAL semester of your Elon career. If you are graduating in the spring, you CANNOT enroll in ECO 498 until spring semester. There will be absolutely no exceptions made to this rule.
Write an acceptable coherent argument paper
Write a one-page preface (letter to your graders) to your coherent argument and a postscript that serves as a final reflection on the entire process. Both of these are handed in with the final paper.
Review papers for Issues in Political Economy if asked
Make an acceptable finalpresentation on campus in front of your peers. This presentation should be about 15 mins in length and should clearly and effectively convey the importance of the topic, the methodology used, the major findings of the study and possible limitations of your analysis.

3. ORAL AND WRITTEN PROPOSALS

After you have zeroed in on a topic and figured out a plan for your research, you will formally propose your topic to the economics faculty and students. Note that this is done at the beginning of the Spring term. Certainly, a number of you will be well beyond the proposal stage. Many of you will be well into your research and will even have a first draft written. In any case, each of you will be at a stage where constructive feedback on your topic will be highly beneficial.

Your proposal (oral and written) needs to address 4 things:

  1. What's your research question?
  2. Literature Review - what have economists done that relates to this topic
  3. How do you intend to address the topic/answer the question? How is your approach different from what others have done?

What economic tools do you plan to use to answer your question? If it is an empirical question, then what is your data? How will you explore and evaluate the hypothesis? If your topic does not lend itself to statistical analysis, then how will you answer your question? What data (evidence) are you planning to use?

If you are intending to extend a paper that was originally written in a previous economic course, or independent study, you MUST do the following:

  1. submit a copy of the original work with your written proposal.
  2. specifically address exactly how you intend to extend the analysis. This extension cannot be trivial (such as applying the same theory to a more up-to-date data set). This requires you to argue WHY this extension is necessary/interesting.

4. PREFACE & POSTSCRIPT

The preface is simply a one-page memo addressed to the graders explaining where (paragraph and page number) the various coherent argument components are found. Consult the scoring guide (see the grading section of this handbook) for an explanation of the coherent argument components.

The postscript gives you an opportunity to reflect on the process of independent research and your final product: the coherent argument. Put your work in a choice context. Given circumstances, what compromises were you forced to make? How did you determine the “right” choices? On hindsight, do you still consider those choices to be rational? What constraints did you face, and how did you adapt to them? Use this postscript as a way to persuade us that you truly exhibited a high degree of adaptive persistence during the process. And of course you know your audience, we will only be persuaded by relatively objective evidence. So it might be a good idea to keep a senior thesis journal. When your memory fails, your journal could supply concrete, specific instances of your adaptive persistence.

5. TIMETABLE

Everyone goes at a slightly different pace. It depends on a lot of factors. Most importantly, you should consult with your advisor on your project. They are in a real position to help you formulate your expectations of when things need to get done.

Having said that, there are a few steps that you do pretty much need to take in order. Early in the fall semester, you need to

Choose an advisor (someone you are comfortable with and/or who can help you given the area you want to work on)

Find a topic

Begin library research

Gather data (loosely defined) appropriate to "test" your hypothesis

And, there are some hard deadlines that everyone must adhere to:

Proposals will be defended orally, by the first week of February.

However, those competing to present at the Eastern Economics Association meetings in New York, NY, will have fulfilled the above requirement since they will have done the following:

Papers to be presented at the Eastern Economic Assoc. meetings will also be chosen during the first week of December. In order to be considered, you must present a 5 min. overview of your topic. We will consider such things as (a) amount of work already completed, (b) originality of the project, and (c) projected quality of the finished project. (time and place to be determined at a later date)

Deadline to submit your paper for publication in the IPE is due around the middle of January, 2001 (this is not a requirement, but you are strongly encouraged to shoot for this)

Deadline for SURF presentations is due early February, 2001, typically the second week of class in the spring semester

Final drafts of papers to be presented at the EEAs are due February 1, 2001

EEA meetings in Washington, D.C., February 23-25th, 2001

Final Presentation of paper for ALL SENIORS will be about April 15, 2001 (time and place to be determined later)

Final Paper is due May 1, 2001

6. GRADING

Grades are based on the following 3 components: (1) the paper (70%), (2) the proposal and final presentation (20%), and (3) the values you display throughout the process (10%). Each permanent member of the economics department will submit a grade for each project. The highest and lowest grades will be thrown out and the remaining grades will be averaged. This will be done at the end of the Spring term, 2000, and grades will be turned in after finals in May.

SCORING GUIDE FOR COHERENT ARGUMENTS

The following scoring guide serves two purposes: (1) to help you reflect on your own work and improve it and (2) so you know what you will be evaluated on. The following items do NOT constitute an OUTLINE for you to follow. There are a number of effective ways to organize a paper. However you organize it, these areas should be addressed.

We will use this guide to grade you paper. We will assign a score to each of these components and add them up to get your total score. The areas we will look at are:

Initial claim

Backing

Theory

Empirical Evaluation

Revised Claim and Summary

Overall Quality of Writing

INITIAL CLAIM: the introduction of the thesis, its relevance and a brief indication of how you are planning to proceed in answering the questions.

Poor

/

Competent

/

Excellent

No clear thesis / Clear, well-focused thesis
Some basic idea of why the question is interesting and why it is topic appropriate for economic analysis. / Clear well-focused thesis
Convinces the reader of the economic importance of the issue
Clearly demonstrates the originality of the work and places it within the context of the economic literature

BACKING: the recognition and understanding of previous, relevant work in the area.

Poor

/

Competent

/

Excellent

Little or no reference to articles in professional journals.
References are not used as an integral part of the argument, or inappropriate references are used. / Some reference to articles in professional journals.
References are used to strengthen and focus the argument. / Numerous references are made to articles in professional journals and/or other original sources.
Effectively appeals to the literature at ALL stages of the argument

THEORY: the use of economic reasoning as the basis for the argument.

Poor

/

Competent

/

Excellent

States but does not clearly explain how the theory is used to analyze the issue at hand; the espoused theory is not central to the argument.
Given the context of the argument, someone else’s theory is improperly applied. / Given the context of the argument, someone else’s theory is correctly applied.
Economic reasoning is clearly and logically explained.
Where possible, some use of mathematical symbolism or graphs to explain theory. / Consistently uses economic concepts and terms when explaining reasoning.
Extensive and effective use of symbolism and graphs to illuminate theory where appropriate.
Creates a useful extension to someone else’s theory, and correctly applies it, given the context of the argument or combines multiple (existing) theories in an original and enlightening way.
Considers and addresses specific assumptions of the argument.

EMPIRICAL EVALUATION: “Empirical” simply refers to evidence that comes from experience or experiments. Data can be thought of as any bit of evidence (e.g., historical, textual, national statistics, experimental results, computer-generated simulations, etc…). These data (loosely defined) must be used to evaluate the argument in a convincing, appropriate way.

Poor / Competent / Excellent
Use either no evidence or only anecdotal evidence to evaluate the thesis.
Uses data only for descriptive purposes. / Uses data or other historical evidence to evaluate the thesis.
Makes explicit use of numerical estimates (mean, median, standard deviation), graphical analysis (scatter plots, line graphs, and box plots), or computer simulations where appropriate.
If the data is numerical, inferential statistics (hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, regressions, etc…) are used, but in a very simple or superficial way.
Reference to historical evidence is used for evaluation, but it is simplistic. / If the data is numerical, the use of sophisticated inferential statistics or computer simulations to evaluate the thesis.
Demonstrates serious reflection on the process by investigating multiple alternative tests or model specifications in order to determine the robustness of the results (an attempt is made to evaluate the evaluation).
Extensive appeals to historical evidence are evident and are applied in a sophisticated and creative manner.

REVISED CLAIM and SUMMARY: the understanding of one’s results and reflection on the implications thereof.