I’m working on a economics report and need an explanation and answer

I’m working on a economics report and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

I.Selection of Term Paper Topic

• Selection of Scholarly Articles or Research Papers to Review

You may consider a wide range of economic topics. While you can use course topics, you cannot use course articles. You are welcome to use lists of references from course articles to find related articles. Canadian content is always welcome but policy issues from other economies, either developed or transitional, are just as welcome.

Examples of Topics from Previous Years.

• Analyzing the Effects of Improving Childcare Accessibility on Female Labour Force Participation
• Do Intellectual Property Rights Truly Promote Innovation and Economic Growth in Developing Countries?
• An Investigation into the Effects of Incentives on Academic Performance
• An Investigation into the Causal Relationship Between Technological Advancement and Wealth Inequality

II.1 General Guidelines

You should choose articles that use data and relatively advanced analytical methods to test economic hypotheses or answer economic questions related to public policy. Ideally, you should aim to choose papers that are both closely relevant to your topic and impactful (e.g., seminal papers in the literature related to your topic).

You are to review only academic research which generally appears in one of two forms:

• Articles published in refereed (peer-reviewed) academic journals.

ii. Research papers (sometimes also referred to as “working papers” or “discussion papers”) issued by well-recognized university departments of economics, not-for-profit research institutes (such as the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Montreal or the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US), and government research organizations such as Statistics Canada.

Unacceptable articles include but are not limited to the following:

• Articles in newspapers and magazines.
• Articles by politicians, political parties, unions, business groups, or advocacy organizations whose principal objective is not to “get the right answer” but to influence public policy. Such papers constitute “advocacy research”, i.e., evidence favoring one’s position is highlighted and evidence not favoring one’s position is ignored or minimized. There is no intent to be unbiased. Academic research is inevitably biased, given that it is authored by human beings, BUT the goal is to be as unbiased as possible.
• Most websites unless you are downloading a paper that falls under one of the two categories listed at the beginning of Section II.1.
• Publications that simply report data patterns (e.g., employment levels or life expectancies). You must choose a paper that attempts to answer some economic question.
• Very short research papers (referred to as “letters” or “notes”)
• No survey papers can be part of your set of three key papers

The selection of three good-quality articles and research papers is a lengthy process. Start as soon as possible to search for articles and research papers. Be very careful when selecting articles and research papers you want to review. It is of paramount importance that you read and follow the guidelines provided here. Not following the guidelines here can result in your paper proposal being rejected which complicates the entire term paper writing process (and may result in lost marks).

Take the time to read the articles and research papers you are proposing to review. Make sure you can actually understand them and that they are closely related to the topic you want to survey. Once a paper or article is included in your Report 2-Summary of papers and is approved by me, you are stuck with it.

II.2 More Specific Guidelines

II.2.1 Not All Academic Research Qualifies

We want to establish some lower bounds on the quality of the articles and research papers you will review. Here are guidelines to follow:

• Journal articles must be published in a journal that appears in the top 250 journals listed at https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.journals.simple.html
• If you select a working paper, you must check the credentials of the author(s). Has the author (one of the authors) published in the top 250 journals? If not, you must reject the paper.

II.2.2 Types of Data used in the Papers you are Reviewing.

Acceptable Types of Data. Observational Data: real-world data from a survey (e.g., Labour Force Survey or Census) or administrative source (such as health care records or tax data).

Experimental data: A Natural Experiment refers to a set of observational data that measures some real-world phenomenon that the researcher believes closely approximates the differences that one would observe between treatment and control groups in an experimental setting. Common examples are differences in government policies (such as tax rates or public health insurance) between provinces or countries or changes in such policies over time. All studies that use observational data can be thought of as using a natural experiment in that a key assumption underlying the statistical analysis in any multiple regression is that unobserved variables (the error term) are not correlated with both the dependent variable and the observed independent variables which is the result one gets if “treatments” (the values of the independent variables) are assigned randomly.

Social Experiment: data from a large-scale experiment designed and run by social scientists in order to test some policy innovation. Participants know they are in an experiment.

Laboratory experiment: an experiment designed and run by social scientists in a laboratory setting.

Field experiment – a small-scale experiment designed and run by social scientists in a real-world setting. Participants often do not know they are in an experiment.

What about simulated data? A paper that relies exclusively on simulation data is not acceptable.

II.2.3 Types of Analysis:

You must select papers containing data analysis.

Purely theoretical papers (i.e., containing no data analysis) are not appropriate as one of your key five papers.

Multivariate Analysis is always acceptable. The most familiar example of this is multiple regression where one estimates the relationship between some dependent variable, such as earnings, and a series of independent variables or determinants such as schooling, age, sex, year, occupation, and size of city.

Bivariate Analysis is generally not acceptable. Bivariate analysis means using simple graphs of time trends in variables or correlations between two variables (earnings and schooling) or differences in average values between two groups (difference in average earnings between university and high school graduates). Bivariate analysis is acceptable in the context of an experiment in which random assignment of individuals to treatment and control groups makes such simple comparisons appropriate.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

Report 1 – Paper Proposal.

Page limit=your report cannot exceed 2 pages

Part I: 1-2 paragraphs

The first part of your proposal should describe the topic you want to work on and motivate the readers why they should be interested in your topic. This would be similar to the first couple of paragraphs that you see in the introduction section of academic articles.

Specifically, you must state the economic question you are after. Be as specific as you can. A vague question will signal to me that you have not made up your mind about your research topic. You must also state the government policies that are related to your proposed work.

Part II

For two of your articles/papers, provide a summary in bullet points covering the following eight items:

1. a complete citation and a web link.

2. justify how the paper/article meets the criteria described in sections II.2.1, II.2.2, and II.2.3 above

3. the economic question being investigated in the paper/article

4. briefly explain how the paper/article directly relates to your research topic

5. specific economic policy(ies) that directly relates to the paper/article (if applicable)

6. the data [sources, periods, countries/provinces/states covered, type (observational, experimental)]

7. method of analysis used (if multivariate regression, tell me what is the dependent variable and what are the independent variables)

8. the paper/article’s main conclusions

Part III

For the other paper/article you plan to review please do the following:

1. provide a complete citation and a web link.

2. justify how the paper/article meets the criteria described in sections II.2.1, II.2.2 and II.2.3 above.

3. briefly explain how the paper/article directly relates to your research topic.

Final note: All of your 3 key papers/articles must meet all of the criteria in sections II.2.1, II.2.2 and II.2.3.