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EC345 - Research in Economics at Colby College
Fall 2007
Professor
Michael R. Donihue
Office Hours: By appointment.
email: Michael.Donihue@colby.edu
Course Description
EC345 is a one-semester analytical research project of your own design. During the course of this project you will learn to develop a research question based on a testable hypothesis, review and apply existing scholarly work relevant to your topic, collect data and/or other evidence to support your research question, and conduct an analysis of this evidence. EC393 (Econometrics) is not a pre-requisite for EC345, nor does a successful project have to include an econometric model. However, it can be much easier to complete an EC345 research project using econometrics.
Recommended Text
The Chicago Guide to Writing About Multivariate Analysis (on reserve in the Colby library)
Critical Dates
| Deadline is 12 noon on |
What's Due |
Points Possible |
| Friday, February 29th |
Research Proposal |
10 |
| Friday, March 21st |
Progress Report |
10 |
| Monday, April 21st |
Working Paper |
25 |
Monday, May 12th
Late Final Papers will not be accepted. |
Final Paper |
55 |
Research Proposal
The Research Proposal is a well formulated plan for your project. Limit your proposal to no more than 2 pages, including your motivation for choosing this topic and a list of any references you have examined in developing your research question. You need not have specified a testable hypothesis at this time, but you should have a well defined question and a general idea of how you will approach your project, including the type of data you will need, how you plan to get the data, and your proposed methods for analyzing it.
Progress Report
The Progress Report should provide a clear outline of your project, fleshing out the details from your Research Proposal. Limit your Progress Report to no more than 5 pages of text, plus any accompanying charts or tables and a list of references. There should be considerable motivational detail that reveals why your question is important. The hypothesis to be tested should be well defined in your Progress Report. You should have completed the collection of your data and other supporting evidence at this point. If you are doing an econometric analysis, a preliminary specification of your model, summary statistics for your data, and perhaps some initial regression results should be included in your report. Any included regression results should be annotated with a description of what is being done and your conclusions from the results.. Attaching output from a statistical package without annotations is not acceptable.
The most difficult part of your research project as you move from the Progress Report to the Working Paper usually comes in developing the theoretical foundations for your analysis. Let the existing literature be your guide here and don't try to reinvent the theory relating to your project.
Working Paper
Working papers in economics represent academic research that is ready for outside review by a colleague, an adviser, or referees for a professional journal. The Working Paper is closer to a next-to-last version of a published journal article than simply a draft of your paper. Your bibliography, and any tables or charts should be in final form. Econometric results and the sources and definitions of your data should be carefully documented. Including output from a statistical package in any form is not acceptable for your Working Paper. In your mind, there should be no unfinished portions in the Working Paper version of your project. Your Working Paper must include an abstract of 150 words or less.
Formatting Guidelines
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Proofread your work. Everything you hand in to me should be free of typographical and spelling errors and well structured in terms of the organization and logical flow from start to finish.
- Include page numbers in the work you hand in to me.
- Plan on a Final Paper of approximately 20 pages in length.
- Your Working Paper and Final Paper should have a separate, unnumbered title page that includes an abstract of no more than 150 words.
- Your paper should use in-line citations when referring to published works and a bibliography that follows a format that is consistent with that found in a standard economics journal. (See FAQ #7, below)
- Use a standard, 12 point font with either one and one-half or double spacing between lines of text.
- Use 1 inch margins surrounding the body of your text (exceptions may occur for charts and tables).
- You may use either footnotes or endnotes. The format of your foot/endnotes should not reproduce your bibliographic entries.
- Unless you receive my permission in advance, you may not submit any of your work electronically.
- Double-sided printing is recommended.
Grading
I do not accept late Final Papers. I will allow you to miss other deadlines, but not without penalty. A late Research Proposal or Progress Report will be assessed a penalty of 1 point per day, up to a maximum of 10 points. A late Working Paper will be penalized at a rate of 5 points per day, up to a maximum of 25 points. Your final grade for EC345 will be calculated on a 100 point scale, using the possible point totals for each portion of the project noted above minus any penalty points.
Your final grade will depend on how well you have addressed my comments on your Working Paper and how diligently you work throughout the semester on your project. A good research project cannot be completed over the course of one or two weeks.
To receive an A, your paper must pose an interesting question and address it in a creative fashion. Several economic concepts should be carefully integrated throughout your paper and placed in the context of current research in the area. An A paper will be very well written and reflect a great deal of thought and rigor.
A B paper poses a rather straightforward question and addresses it in a logical fashion. Economic concepts and relevant research are applied accurately and are integrated into the analysis in a logical fashion. A B paper will be well written and reflect a significant amount of effort. Your approach to the problem may not be particularly creative, an early deadline or appointment may have been missed, but overall the paper satisfactorily addresses an interesting question in a thoughtful and careful manner.
A C paper poses a rather obvious question and answers it in a straightforward manner with little or no creativity. A paper that makes errors in applying standard economic concepts or fails to apply them in a logical manner is likely to receive a C grade. Such papers are typically not well thought out, do not reflect much diligence or effort, are not well written, and are noticeably careless in content and style.
Academic Honesty
Colby's guidelines for academic honesty can be found in the student handbook. Any paper that is found to include plagiarized material will receive a failing grade. See FAQ #4 for some help on understanding plagiarism and how to avoid it. In cases of flagrant academic dishonesty in any form I will refer the case to the Dean of Students Office for further disciplinary action.
Frequently-Asked-Question #1: How do I find a topic for my EC345?
Think about why you chose to major in Economics and the topics in your economics classes at Colby you have found most interesting. Look for economic content in important current events. Consider assigned readings that interested you from previous classes and explore their bibliographic references for more depth on a particular topic. In particular, look for the author’s suggestions for further research in an area (usually found in the concluding section of the paper). Once you have identified one or two areas of interest, explore the literature in these areas. Use the reference librarians and appropriate information technology resources to search the economics literature. Explore the extensive collection of journals in Colby’s library. Think about how you might apply a particular method of analysis to an area it hasn’t often been used before. After you have done this, take your ideas to one or two members of the faculty and discuss it with them to help you focus your research question, identify what is feasible, and help define your topic.
FAQ #2: How do I structure my research project?
Different people have different methods for doing academic research. As I proceed through the various stages of my research I prefer to work from an outline, refining it through successive iterations. One advantage to this approach is that you can divide your project into separate pieces; working on different parts of the project when the going gets tough in another area or you get held up waiting for data or inter-library loans or an appointment to see your adviser. Working on your project then becomes an iterative process of refining your outline and adding more detail. Then, to prepare your Working Paper you can concentrate on the “connective tissue” that binds together the main points from your outline and a thorough edit to ensure consistency across sections. Here is a recommended outline for a research project of this magnitude.
- Introduction.
Here you present your research question and describe what you intend to do. In this section you motivate your paper in a way that gives a sense for why your question is interesting and important as well as a hint to your results.
- Literature Review.
Here you review and analyze the relevant literature, providing a context for your work in terms of what's come before by other scholars.
- Theoretical Foundations.
This section should provide an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of your project.
- Research methods.
Here you explain how you will answer your research question and define your hypothesis and how you will test it. If you are using econometrics to address your research question, then this section will include a specification of your model.
- Data Analysis and Empirical Evidence.
Here you summarize your data and provide your empirical results. If your project is not econometrically based, then in this section you will provide some form of evidence that either supports or refutes your hypothesis as it applies to your research question.
- Conclusions.
Here you should place your results in the context of the existing literature and demonstrate the contribution of your research project.
You do not have to structure your research effort in this fashion in order to get full credit at each stage of the project. However, the areas outlined above represent the components I will be looking for when I evaluate your project in whatever form it takes.
FAQ #3: When should I use foot/endnotes?
In general, foot/endnotes should be used sparingly because they detract from the story being told in the text. Here are some instances in which foot/endnotes are appropriate:
- Direct quotes in your text.
- Sources for data or facts cited in your text.
- Representative examples of ideas or related works on a subject described in your text.
- Any time a page number is required to appropriately cite a source.
FAQ #4: How do I avoid plagiarism?
My experience has been that students tend to over-cite the relevant literature in producing their EC345 papers, filling the foot/endnote space with citations for each paragraph (or even every sentence!) in an attempt to avoid charges of plagiarism. However, simply citing a source does not absolve you from plagiarism. Check out the following resources for more information. A paper with lots of foot/endnote citations tells me that you don't really understand what plagiarism is nor when the use of foot/endnotes is appropriate.
Colby Library: Avoiding Plagiarism
Farnham Writers' Center: Plagiarism
FAQ #5: Where can I find data for my research project?
Begin your search for data by checking the department's web link for data resources. In addition, the Economics Department subscribes to a wide variety of databases and much of the data you need may already be available electronically. Make an appointment to see me about your data needs before you begin entering any data on your own.
FAQ #6: How do I write an abstract?
An abstract is simply a succinct summary of what motivates your research question and a hint to the most important results in your project. The abstract is typically the last thing you write when completing your Working Paper. Chapter 11 in The Chicago Guide to Writing About Multivariate Analysis (on reserve in the Colby library) is a good resource for writing abstracts and introductions.
FAQ #7: What format should I use for citing sources?
My preference regarding the appropriate formatting style for your research project includes in-line citations, foot/endnotes, and a complete description of your data set. As noted in the Formatting Guidelines above, foot/endnotes should not reproduce bibliographic entries. The style guide used by the Journal of Economic Perspectives is a good example of formatting guidelines for bibliographic entries. A particularly good example of a wide variety of sources cited in an appropriate fashion appears in the JEP article, "Teaching Statistics and Econometrics to Undergraduates," by William E. Becker and William H. Greene.
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