ECO Project

11 Jun ECO Project

Empirical Project

The research project should be about 10 pages and should explain your data

collection, model, and findings. The project (due by the final exam date)

is worth 25% of your final grade. Below is a quick guide to doing

empirical research.

Guide to doing an empirical research (see also Ch. 11 in the PowerPoint

folder):

Step 1: Preliminary Decisions: Before you start on your computer work

and writing you need to decide upon a research area for your project. Most

students will likely focus on testing theories in economics and finance.

However, the topics are not constrained to these.

Step 2: Model formation and Literature review: Once you have picked a

topic you should do a literature search (google scholar is a good place to

start and so is the Journal of Economic Literature (available on line and in

the library) to see what others who have done work on this topic have found

and where they collected data. Based on this you should try to formulate a

specific (or set of) statistical models.

Step 3: Data Collection Again, most data sources (macroeconomic and

financial in particular) are available online. Students should have until

March 28 to have their topics approved and to indicate where their

data sources will be coming from. This needs to be done by in person

either during office hours or by scheduling an appointment.

Step 4: Computer Work Once you have gathered your data save them in

an e-views file. Please provide me (via e-mail) a copy of your data file

when you hand in your project. Estimate your regressions and test your

hypotheses.

Step 5: Writing the Paper Show that you have understood and are able to

apply some of the statistical concepts covered in the class. The paper

should have the following parts:

Introduction

a. State the problem you want to study (what question(s) are you

asking)?

b. Explain why answering this question is important.

c. Include a brief literature review and explain how your project adds to

this literature.

The Model

d. Explain the logic behind of your model, inclusion of variables,

statistical method used..etc.

e. State your expectations of the signs of the coefficients (specify the

hypothesis you would like to test with the data).

Reporting your results

f. Interpret your results.

g. Test hypotheses and report confidence intervals where appropriate.

h. Where appropriate use your estimated model for prediction

(forecasting).

i. Check for violations of classical assumptions and other problems with

specification

Summary

j. Summarize your findings and conclude by discussing what you would

do next to improve the reliability of your report.

Examples of paper topics:

Housing and Interest Rates

Unions and Wages

Minimum Wages and Unemployment

Climate and Economic Growth

Sports and the Demand for College

Auto Insurance Rates by State

Legalized Drugs and Crime

The Effect of Family Income on Grade Point Averages

Life expectancy across nations

What explains obesity rates?

Cross National differences in literacy

Auto Fatality Rates across States

Political Business Cycles

Income Inequality and Crime

Salary Discrimination

Regression Analysis of Voter Turnout

Religion and Crime

Cigarette taxes and Smoking

Marriage and Productivity in Sports

Does financial aid raise college tuition?

Competitive Balance and Sports Demand

Is Divorce Counter-Cyclical?

Economic Patterns in Voting

Politics and the Stock Market