Welcome to Research for Economists
Research for Economists is a class designed to prepare students pursuing research in economics. The class focuses on developing the research skills necessary to engage in meaningful research. Students enrolled in the class will work directly with me, with a possibility of serving as research assistant on one of my current projects.
Course Description
This course is for students interested in conducting original research in economics. There will be an emphasis on data sources, and research methods. Students will prepare an oral presentation, prepare a complete paper, and will serve as peer reviewers to evaluate classmates' research projects. The course will also provide information on graduate school related activities. As part of the class students are expected to attend workshops and research presentations at local and regional conferences.
Student Learning Objectives
Create a collaborative forum that helps students formulate economic hypotheses, test the hypotheses rigorously and communicate the results orally and in writing. Students will present ideas and solicit suggestions from peers, as well as the professor. The interaction with student peers is an important part of the course. The end results should be a high quality, original economics research paper. As peers, students are expected to give feedback to others and also be familiar with other classmates’ research. Your experience in this class will introduce you to STATA, and other data visualization software like Tableau.
Research Timeline
May- Read and exposure to papers and ideas Lit Review
June- Dataset selection and question of interest
July- Data summary and analysis
August- Writing Draft 1
September presentations
October 1 submission to KEA
2023-2024 Research Theme
To help guide our research, the Haile Econ Fellows program has annual themes. This year, our theme is
Identifying and explaining equity gaps.
Your research should focus on using data to show differences between subgroups in the U.S economy. The groups of comparison will be something you have to decide on. Also, which differences are up to you, you can look at spending, income, wealth, time use, financial literacy, health…etc. The possibilities are endless. I would also encourage you to examine how the difference between the subgroups varies due to changes in the economy or policy.
Week 1
Week 1- Getting to Know Research
During the first week of the course we will spend a lot of time thinking about and defining what economic research is. Asking the right questions is hard, finding the right dataset to work with is even harder. Best way to identify your questions is to learn about what others have asked and what they have answered. Reading literature is the most important part to getting started.
This week we will read previous papers written by Econ Fellows and that were presented at the KEA.
You will be split into two groups. Each group will be required to read and present a summary of one paper.
We will discuss the outline of papers in economics
Introduction: Pose an interesting question or problem
Literature Review: Survey the literature on your topic
Methods/Data: Formulate your hypothesis and describe your data
Results: Present your results with the help of graphs and charts
Discussion: Critique your method and/or discuss any policy implications and limitations
Conclusions: Summarize what you have done; pose questions for further research
How to ask good questions?
Week 2
Best way to ask the right questions is through exposure to other ideas and great research. This week, we will continue down this path of inquiry.
We will delve into the work of Raj Chetty this week. We will see how Raj and his team adjust their presentation styles based on the audience.
Read a summary by a Think Tank. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/08/02/7-key-takeaways-from-chettys-new-research-on-friendship-and-economic-mobility/
Watch the video of the presentation
Deliverables
Group Presentation on a previous Fellow’s research
Question brainstorm session
Week 3
This week we will start learning about datasets and research that has used that dataset.
Here is a list of datasets that we use often in economics. This list is not complete but a good starting point.
Pick a Dataset for the List
Come up with 3-5 questions you would be interested in and the data could help you answer
Find 3-5 economic papers that use the dataset of interest and summarize the papers.