ECO 4810. Seminar in Economics

Syllabus | Calendar

Instructor: John Whitehead
Last Update: 03/19/2008

Research Plan

A. The proposal

  1. Title - Descriptive, not too short, not too long
  2. Problem statement - Identification of an economic issue (important or trivial, hard or soft, it does not matter) to which you will be able to apply economic theory and statistics (i.e., this is your revised topic paragraph).
  3. Objectives - tests of hypotheses, problem solving, policy analysis
  4. Identification of literature - search for journal articles, book chapters or working papers [only; no books, mag articles, web pages, etc] in EconLit, RePEc, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, SSRN
  5. Identification of data - location of data available over the internet and/or in the library
  6. Methods and procedures - propose an empirical model that uses your data and tests your theory. State the dependent variable. Describe the independent variables and what you think the results might be.

B. Writing

  1. Writing is thinking
  2. Economical Writing: An Executive Summary | Top ten
  3. University Writing Center

C. Details

  1. Cover page: Title (subtitle: A Research Proposal), Name, ECO 4810, Date
  2. The proposal should be at least one page and no more than 1.5 pages
  3. Format: 12 point Times New Roman font, 1 inch margins all around, double-spacing (no extra spaces)