ECON 4310

Term Project

STEP 1

TOPIC IDENTIFCATION

Deadline: March 14, Sunday (Midnight)

Submit your topic via email to .

STEP 2

PROPOSAL PRESENTATION

Time: 10 minutes (minimum)

Class: April 1st

Purpose:

The purpose of the presentation is to assess your progress in the term project. This should serve as a half-way check point in your project. Although it is not necessary that you present your estimation results, it would be beneficial to you if you do so. In the past, most students who presented preliminary estimation results scored higher in the paper than those who didn’t because they had a better chance of receiving feedback on the results.

The (minimum) requirements for the presentation are:

  1. Review the literature and develop the theoretical model.
  2. Specify the estimation model: Select the independent variables and the functional form.
  3. Hypothesize the expected signs of the coefficients.

You should also discuss where you will get the data, if you haven’t done so, and what the data might look like.

In addition to the assessment purpose, the basic idea of this exercise is to “help other people help you”, meaning that the more you cover in your presentation, the more you will benefit from it.

ECON 4310

Paper Guidelines

GENERAL GUIDELINES

  • Due May 9 (Sunday), midnight
  • Double-spaced contents with proper citations.
  • Make sure your writing is clear, intelligent and make economic sense. You should spell-check the entire paper before submitting it.
  • Save your paper in 2003 Word or DOC format (not DOCX, which is not fully supported by all university PCs or Turnitin).
  • Send a copy of your Word file via email to . Your file is an attachment to the email and the file name should be in the format of LastName_FirstNameInitial_ECON4310.doc. If your name is Jane Dole, then your file should be Dole_J_ECON4310.doc.
  • You will receive confirmation by 5 p.m., May 10.
  • Your file will be scanned by the instructor at Turnitin for originality before grading.

SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

The following is a checklist of minimum requirements. Point deductions will apply to each item missed. There is no set rule for the exact amount of points to be deducted for each requirement not met. A general rule of thumb is a 10-point reduction for a point that you miss entirely and a partial point reduction if you address that point unsatisfactorily. More weight will be given to Section 4.

PART ONE: COVER PAGE

  • Title: Make sure this statement captures the scope of your study well.
  • Your name, course number etc.
  • Abstract: A summary of the paper in about 100 words. Hint: You can draw much from the conclusion section below.

PART TWO: CONTENTS

  1. Introduction Section
  2. What is the subject matter of your paper?
  3. Why is this topic important to study? Or why is it an economic issue?
  4. How does the existing literature address this topic? And where does your paper fit in (i.e., how original is your paper, or it is an application or an extension of the existing literature with new data or sample?)
  5. A brief description of the different sections of the paper.
  1. Literature Review Section
  2. How has previous research work addressed your issue?
  3. Is there any area that those previous studies haven’t address but you do (i.e., the reason why you write this paper, like that you applied a model to data of recent years)?
  4. How the existing literature helps you with your model specification (i.e., what do you learn from the literature about the variables that will be included in your model)?
  5. Write out the theoretical model, if any.
  1. Model Specification and Data Section
  2. Write out the model for estimation.
  3. What is the dependent variable?
  4. What are the explanatory variables?
  5. What is the functional form, if not linear?
  6. How are the variables measured (e.g., GDP is a measure of output)?
  7. Why should those explanatory variables be included in the model? How are they tied to previous studies?
  8. What are the hypotheses or the expected signs of the coefficients?
  9. What are the data sources (e.g., Bureau of Labor Statistics)?
  10. What do the data look like? (i.e., provide a table of summary statistics and discuss the mean and variance of the variables)
  11. What is your estimation methodology (i.e., did you use OLS from EViews?)?
  1. Estimation Results Section
  2. Write out the estimated model either in the form of an equation or list the results in a table. The results should include coefficient estimates and model diagnostic statistics (R2, F-statistic, DW, etc).
  3. Discuss in detail each of the coefficient estimates (the signs, sizes and statistical significance of the estimates). How do you interpret the estimates (i.e., what does each estimate indicate in “economic sense”)?
  4. What is the statistical evidence for your hypotheses?
  5. What does each of the model diagnostic statistics indicate?
  6. Is there any evidence of (i) model misspecification, (ii) multicollinearity, (iii) serial correlation (time series data), and (iv) heteroskedasticity (cross-sectional data)? Make sure you either provide test results or discuss evidence for these potential problems? If there is evidence for any of the problems, how do you resolve it?
  7. What are the main findings from your empirical model?
  1. Conclusion Section
  2. Summarize your paper from the introductory section to your estimation results section.
  3. Highlight the key findings once more.
  4. For an economics papers, what would be the policy implication (i.e., is there anything that policymakers can learn from your study?)?

PART THREE: ENDING MATERIAL

References

  • Style is flexible but must be consistent (e.g., AP style)
  • List all references cited in the text.
  • List references in alphabetical order by author name.
  • A minimum of 5 academic research articles.
  • Other resources can be newspaper articles or online materials.

Appendix

This optional section may contain tables and graphs if you don’t include them in the main text.

The above format is what most of the samples handed out in this course have in common. So, you can use them for reference.

Final Advice:

No one is perfect. To be sure, you will definitely not end up with a perfect paper because no one does. Yet you should avoid as many errors as you can, especially those that will cost you points. A good practice is to read it at least once after you finish up your paper. Put it aside for one full day and then read it again. I am sure you will find some errors. Better yet you find someone else (who is less forgiving) read it and ask if he/she understands what you write.